The economic climate
GDP in real terms grew by 2% in 2019, compared to 2.4% in 2018. When analysing the interannual rates, a trend of progressive moderation can be observed throughout the year, prolonging, with some occasional fluctuations, the downward trend that had characterised 2018. The profile of total employment is more pronounced and somewhat more irregular as a result of the evolution it showed in 2018. In any case, measured by the number of full-time equivalent employees, employment also slowed slightly, going from a growth of 2.5% in 2018 to an increase of 2.3% in 2019, 3% and 2.7% in the case of salaried employees. The moderation in household consumption growth and the low increase in investment are the main reasons for the slowdown in activity; External demand, on the other hand, improved its performance in 2019, contributing half a point to growth.
The indicators constructed from fiscal information also showed this pattern of progressive moderation of growth, although in this case the slowdown was temporarily halted in the central months of the year. The sales of Large Non-Financial Companies , at constant population, calendar-adjusted and deflated, closed the year with an increase of 1.8%, below the 3% of 2018. The year began with high rates, similar to those at the end of 2018, but from May onwards growth lost intensity, giving way to a period of relative stability, which was broken in the last quarter when the slowdown became more pronounced. This same pattern was observed in domestic sales, while exports improved in the central part of the year, moderating their growth in recent months. A similar behaviour is observed when corporate SMEs are added to the analysis. Thus, the growth in 2019 of the total sales of Large Companies and corporate SMEs , deflated and corrected for seasonal and calendar variations, is estimated at 2.6%, almost two points less than in 2018.
For its part, the number of recipients of employment income , a variable declared when filing withholdings and which allows us to approximate the evolution of salaried employment, grew by 2.6% in Large Companies with a constant population and by 3% in the group of Large Companies and corporate SMEs, in both cases below the rates recorded in 2018 (3.1% and 4.4%, respectively). Social Security affiliates, another indicator of fiscal origin, also grew less than in the previous year (2.6% in 2019 compared to 3.1% in 2018). Charts 1.4 and 1.5 clearly show the evolution of employment over the last two years.
As regards the prices , those most closely related to consumer spending, which are those that most influence the evolution of tax revenues, in 2019 they had a slightly lower growth than in the previous year. This can be seen in the National Accounting deflator for household final consumption expenditure, which grew by 1.2% compared to 1.5% in 2018, and, more sharply, in the general CPI, which increased by 0.7% in 2019 (0.5% in the last quarter) after 1.7% in 2018. As in previous years, the performance was highly conditioned by the energy component, which declined in the second half of the year. The core CPI, which, excluding unprocessed food and energy products, attempts to reflect the trend evolution of prices, showed, on the other hand, a slightly increasing profile in 2019, although at the end of the year it reached only 1%, which is the increase that this index already had in the second half of 2018.
The evolution of activity and prices, both on a downward trajectory in 2019, caused domestic demand in nominal terms, the macroeconomic aggregate most closely related to income, to also show downward growth, with a profile very similar to that of sales, with high increases in the first few months of the year, more moderate increases in the central half-year and with a new slowdown in the final quarter. The year ended with an increase of 3.4% (4.2% in 2018). The other aggregate of interest for income is the remuneration of employees which was the only variable with a more expansive behavior than in previous years (4.7% in 2019 and 4% in 2018) thanks to salary increases.