One of the factors that could limit the speed of the economic recovery in Spain is the mismatch that is beginning to become apparent in the labour market. New unfilled job offers have been growing significantly since late 2020, and in Q2 2021 there were around 120,000, the highest figure in the last decade.
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The inflationary episode currently being experienced by the Spanish economy is due to a major shock in costs. While the focus has been on the rise in prices for energy and agricultural commodities, since mid-2021 a large number of key raw materials and intermediate goods used in a wide range of production processes have also become considerably more expensive. This article shows how the higher price of these products has affected manufacturers’ operating costs, forcing them to pass on part of this increase to their customers so as not to jeopardise their economic viability.
Technology is advancing at a frenetic pace and offers the agrifood chain a large number of opportunities to make its production more efficient and sustainable. Moreover, the arrival of COVID-19 has shown that the most digitalised companies were able to continue their activities more readily than the rest. In this article we examine the degree of popularity of the different digital technologies used in the primary sector and agrifood industry based on a text analysis of over 2 million tweets on Twitter. All these technologies are essential to create a connected ecosystem that will make up the Food Chain 4.0 of the future.
The situation of the tourism sector improved considerably during the summer months, outperforming the projections of many of the companies in the industry.
Desde 2022, la restauración en España vive una fuerte reactivación gracias al auge turístico y a la recuperación pospandemia. Sin embargo, aunque los ingresos prácticamente duplican los niveles previos a la crisis sanitaria y el empleo en el sector ha alcanzado cifras récord, persiste un reto estructural: cada año, 1 de cada 10 empresas del sector entra o sale del mercado. El análisis regional y la comparación con la UE confirman que la elevada rotación empresarial responde, entre otros factores, a la alta densidad de locales, al reducido tamaño de las empresas y a un menor grado de profesionalización, lo que se traduce en ingresos por empleado significativamente inferiores.
The agrifood sector has continued to perform well since the most critical months of the pandemic. Primary sector production remains at a high level, the food industry is recovering from the slump experienced in 2020 and demand indicators suggest food consumption patterns are gradually getting back to normal, both in and outside the home. Agrifood exports are also booming, a lever of growth that will continue to be vital for the sector’s future.
The Spanish economy has kicked off 2025 with widespread growth, albeit slightly more moderate than that of the previous year. Despite the global challenges, such as the protectionist shift in the US, half of its sectors are showing signs of expansion, most notably the chemicals and pharmaceutical industry. This buoyancy across the various sectors, coupled with the country’s competitive advantage in renewable energies, bolsters the resilience of the economy amid an uncertain international environment.
2020 will go down in history as the year of COVID but it will also be remembered that, faced by a very difficult situation, the response provided by the food chain was extraordinary, guaranteeing an uninterrupted supply to all Spanish households. A year and a half later, the primary sector still looks remarkably dynamic, although the exceptional growth rates posted during the most critical months of the pandemic have now been left behind.
The CaixaBank Research Sectoral Indicator is a synthetic indicator that encompasses information from 17 variables into a single indicator. It is a monthly indicator and it compiles data dating back to January 2011. It is calculated for 24 economic sectors, including the four major ones: agriculture, forestry and fishing, manufacturing, construction and services.
During the months of lockdown there was a radical change in food consumption patterns in Spain. Using internal data on spending with Spanish and foreign cards via CaixaBank POS terminals, we can see that expenditure in supermarkets and large food stores picked up noticeably during the state of emergency. Online shopping also increased, partly to minimise travel and contact between people, whereas consumption in restaurants plummeted. Despite the fact that, during the summer, household expenditure on restaurants picked up strongly, the slump in foreign tourism continues to be particularly detrimental to establishments geared towards international clients.
Executive summary. Expansion, resilience and new challenges for the Spanish agrifood sector
Agrifood
The retail trade is one of the Spanish economy’s main service sectors. An atomised sector, it is particularly labour-intensive with a widespread presence throughout the country.
The outbreak of the pandemic in early 2020 has had unprecedented repercussions in many areas of the economy. One of these has been household consumption, the main component of GDP and traditionally considered an indicator of the health of the economy and the well-being of society. Because of the restrictions on business and mobility during the health crisis caused by COVID-19, the drop in consumption was much greater than during previous crises. The positive side is that once restrictions were lifted, Spain’s consumption has rebounded more sharply in 2021 than in the past. In fact, in October the consumption tracker produced by CaixaBank Research using internal data was already 13% higher than in the same month of 2019.
The pandemic has highlighted the strategic nature of the agrifood industry as an essential activity to supply the population with food. The sector has therefore been one of the least affected by the crisis: the primary sector's relative share of the total economy increased and the agrifood industry posted a much smaller decline than manufacturing industry as a whole in Q2 2020. Labour market trends have also been relatively favourable, with relatively few job losses and a smaller proportion of workers affected by furlough measures.
The pandemic has inevitably brought about major changes in our consumption habits. Faced with the impossibility of going to a store in person, online shopping channels have gained a lot of share in 2020. According to an analysis of CaixaBank’s internal data, this growth has not only been significant but also widespread among companies of different sizes and sectors, and has encouraged many of them to use e-commerce as a sales channel for the very first time.
The distribution of consumer spending over the month, a key question for understanding consumer behaviour, has not yet been studied in the depth it deserves because of the scarcity of high-frequency public data. How do consumers allocate their spending week by week? How much more do they spend at the beginning of the month, which is when most people are paid? Do we consume with the same intensity regardless of our age or our income? Thanks to the use of CaixaBank’s internal data on a daily frequence, we are able to carefully analyse the time patterns of consumption and answer these questions.
In this issue of the Real Estate Sector Report we take stock of a more positive 2023 than expected and offer our forecasts for 2024-2025, which we have also revised upwards. In addition, we analyse how population growth has driven up housing demand in Spain in recent years; how the real estate markets of the main advanced economies have responded to the tightening of financial conditions, and what we expect for Spain’s commercial real estate market.
In Spain, households have begun to reduce the savings accumulated during the pandemic in order to sustain their consumption levels in an environment of high inflation. The fall in the savings rate has also been reflected in Spanish households’ financial assets.
With the general government deficit expected to stabilise at around 4.0% of GDP in 2023, the Treasury’s funding needs will remain high. The market will also have to absorb all of the debt held by the ECB that will not be reinvested by the central bank, after it announced a shift in its strategy in December. In this context, it is useful to put into perspective the volume of debt that the market will have to absorb during 2023.