All analysis from category Macro comment
Macro comment
PMI in January: new year brings no improvement
Business conditions were below the neutral value of 50 points in January for the twentieth month in a row, indicating a decline in business activity.
Macro comment
Q4 GDP: turnaround in household consumption
Gross domestic product grew by 0.2% quarter-on-quarter in Q4 2023, down 0.2% from Q4 2022. For the full year 2023, GDP fell by 0.4%. However, this is a first estimate that can be revised in either direction.
Macro comment
Retail sales in November: renewed growth towards the end of the year
Retail sales in November started to grow again after 20 months on a year-on-year basis.
Macro comment
Consumer prices in December: The end of high inflation
High inflation is slowly catching up. It should return to its usual low levels this year. Real wages will start to rise again and we will be able to focus on other issues instead of inflation. The Consumer Price Index fell by 0.4 per cent month-on-month in December. Year-on-year inflation fell to 6.9 per cent.
Macro comment
Unemployment in December: more unemployed than job vacancies
The share of unemployed in the population increased by 0.2 percentage point to 3.7% in December. This is the same level as in December 2022. 279 thousand jobseekers were registered at the labour offices, 16 thousand more than in November. The increase in unemployment in December is purely due to seasonal factors (seasonal layoffs in agriculture or construction). After seasonal adjustment, we estimate that the unemployment rate has been more or less flat at 3.6% all year 2023.
