Global | Economic outlook for 2024

The economy in general should start 2024 much stronger than expected a year ago after outperforming expectations in 2023. The risks facing the global economy must not materialize for the year to end up better than expected a few quarters ago.

Key points

• Key points:
• We should see a slight slowdown in economic growth in advanced economies and China in 2024. However, this should be offset by growth in other emerging economies, leaving world GDP set to grow by 3%, repeating 2023's level.
• In the U.S., all signs suggest that GDP growth will end in 2023 a point higher than forecast a year ago. The outlook for next year is less upbeat, with GDP set to grow by 1.5% and inflation gradually approaching the Federal Reserve's (Fed) target, thereby defying the recession fears abounding last year. If so, the Fed could start cutting interest rates by spring, even to below 4.75% by the end of next year.
• The eurozone's performance in 2023 was much more in line with forecasts. Admittedly, the year started with the economy weathering the energy crisis better than expected. It eventually stagnated, but later than expected. For 2023 as a whole, GDP growth should be around 4-tenths, half a point higher than expected a year ago, but with recovery also coming later. For 2024, we estimate GDP growth of 0.7% for the eurozone.
• Spain posted GDP growth of 2.4% in 2023, twice as high as last year's forecast. This was mostly due to robust tourism, expansionary fiscal policy (partly related to the election cycle, judging by the trend in public employment in the year's first few months), and much higher-than-expected growth in late 2022 and the first half of 2023.
• Spain was affected by the slowdown elsewhere in Europe, but our economy held up much better, registering growth in the second half of the year of close to 1.5%; i.e. the same rate expected for 2024.

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