Spain | Catalonia Economic Outlook 2024. Second Half 2024

Catalonia's GDP will grow by 3.0% in 2024 and 2.6% in 2025, outpacing Spain's growth in both years. This will create 175,000 jobs between 2024 and 2025.

Key points

• Key points:
• GDP growth in 2024 could reach 3.0% (2.9% in Spain). This reflects improvements in competitiveness, particularly in the services sector, and increases in employment, despite the difficulties facing the main foreign markets for tourism and goods. Social Security affiliation continues to show high dynamism until October, particularly in the city of Barcelona and the urban area of ​​Girona, driven by activity in the services sectors.
• Towards 2025, dynamism could remain high, with growth of 2.6% (2.4% in Spain). The recovery of European demand will help boost activity, particularly in sectors that still show signs of weakness, such as automobiles or capital goods, while in others a recovery in exports is already observed in the second quarter of 2024.
• The economy faces structural challenges such as bottlenecks in some sectors that are limiting industrial production, and the low level of investment and productivity, particularly in housing. The lack of affordable housing could limit the attraction of human capital. The tourism sector could be limited by various factors, including the saturation of destinations and the effect of climate change.
• If these forecasts are met, GDP in 2025 would be 8% above the pre-crisis level. In addition, the unemployment rate will fall to 8.0% on average in 2025 and 175,000 new jobs could be created in 2024 and 2025.

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