2024/Q4 Article 05. An overview of the Spanish economy’s performance since the pandemic following the revision of national accounts: a European comparison

Series: Economic Bulletin.

Author: José Luis Fernández, Enrique Moral-Benito and Alberto Urtasun

Economic situation

• Economic growth and convergence
• International cooperation
• Business investment

Full document

2024/Q4 Article 05. An overview of the Spanish economy’s performance since the pandemic following the revision of national accounts: a European comparison (699 KB)

Abstract

Rationale

This article describes the revisions to the annual and quarterly national accounts (ANA and QNA, respectively) published by the National Statistical Institute (INE) in September, and analyses developments in the Spanish economy in recent years (up to 2024 Q2) relative to other European countries.

Takeaways

• The revised ANA and QNA published by the INE in September raised Spain’s cumulative GDP growth for the period 2019 Q4-2024 Q2 by 1 percentage point (pp). This was in line with the upward revisionsin countries such as France (1.3 pp) and Italy (0.8 pp). By contrast, Germany’s cumulative GDP growth figure was revised downwards by 0.1 pp.
• Thus, in 2024 Q2 Spain’s GDP stood 5.7% above its pre-pandemic level, a larger positive gap than that for the euro area as a whole (4.2%). In any event, this euro area aggregate masks significant cross-country heterogeneity: the figure is highly influenced by the weakness in Germany (whose gap relative to pre-pandemic levels in 2024 Q2 was 0.2%), which stands in contrast to the relative buoyancy observed in countries such as Greece, Portugal and Italy (with gaps of 8.5%, 6.8% and5.5%, respectively).
• In Spain, the revision of the GDP growth rate since the pandemic owes to an increased contribution from domestic demand (+1.8 pp), due to stronger government consumption and investment than reported previously, which more than offset the downwards revision (-0.8 pp) to the contribution of net external demand. Even so, there is no significant change compared to the previous data in terms of which demand headings have been the Spanish economy’s main growth drivers in recent years (government consumption and external demand) and which are on a slower recovery trajectory (private consumption and investment). By sector of activity, the GDP growth recorded since the pandemic is almost entirely attributable to the strength of market services, which is largely unchanged from the pre-revision figures.
• The new series also indicate that unit labour costs in Spain grew by 21.5% in the post-pandemic period, 1.7 pp more than previously estimated, as compensation per employee was revised up further than productivity. This means a slight loss of competitiveness relative to the euro area as a whole, where unit labour costs increased by 18.3% in the same period. However, since the pandemic, the unit gross operating surplus has grown less robustly in Spain (12.7%) than in the euro area as a whole (22.8%).