The economic climate
In annual terms, economic activity showed a slowdown compared to 2024. The chained index that measures the evolution of GDP in terms of volume It grew by 2.8% in 2025, seven tenths less than in 2024 (Table 1.1). Year-on-year rates gradually slowed, from 3.7% in the last quarter of 2024 to 2.7% in the second half of 2025 (2.8% at year-end, Chart 1.1). The growing weakness of external demand was the cause of the lower growth of GDP real as the year progressed (Graph 1.2). The slowdown observed during the year is tempered when the quarter-on-quarter rates are analyzed (Graph 1.3). The weak start to the year was corrected as the quarters progressed, so that the overall picture for the year shows an upward slope that culminated in the last quarter with growth similar to that recorded at the end of 2024. As will be seen later, this same trend of improvement in the last part of the year was also observed in the tax base indicators.
In nominal terms, the slowdown during the year was similar to that experienced by real activity. The result was a growth of GDP nominal of 5.8% in 2025 after 6.4% in 2024. The same did not happen with the evolution throughout the year, which was upward in the case of GDP nominal (Graph 1.1), even more so in the last quarter due to the rebound in prices in the final months of the year. The slowdown was also seen in domestic demand, a better indicator of income than the GDP nominal. In 2025 domestic demand grew by 6.1%, three tenths less than in 2024 and one less than in 2023, which gives an idea of the intense and stable growth that this variable has followed after the recovery in 2022 after the impact of Covid (Graph 1.4). Employee compensation, another variable that better explains income than GDP In nominal terms, it barely noticed the slowdown, growing by 7.2% in 2025, almost the same as in 2024 (7.3%).
Meanwhile, indicators based on fiscal information also signaled a slowdown throughout the year with a rebound in recent months, although overall growth in 2025 was higher than in 2024. The daily sales of the Immediate Supply of Information system (SII) of the VAT, They grew at a faster rate than in 2024, starting from very high rates in the early stages of the year and gradually moderating (Graph 1.5). The information provided by these daily sales was supplemented in 2025 with the Daily Indoor Sales Flash, This indicator provides a week's advance of the daily domestic sales data already offered and also includes an estimate of the trend cycle component, in order to better visualize the underlying evolution of sales and to have indicators of the variation in the very short term (inter-day or inter-weekly differences). Chart 1.6 shows the behavior of this cycle-trend in 2025, with large increases at the beginning of the year that subsequently moderated. Chart 1.7, showing the week-on-week differences, allows us to see when during the year there were advances in activity. However, the clear slowdown profile shown by daily sales changes when the impact of prices is removed, especially industrial prices, whose variation, as will be seen later, was very different at the beginning and end of the year. It is for this reason that, when daily data is analyzed from a monthly perspective, eliminating the influence of prices and correcting for seasonal and calendar effects (cvec), as shown in Figure 1.8, the diagnosis is different: The trend is best defined by a pattern of stability with the aforementioned rebound in the final stretch of the year. And in Graph 1.9 you can see the different behavior of domestic sales and exports. The first ones show a slight slowdown since the beginning of the year, consistent with what the Flash showed, which breaks down in the last months, while exports were correcting their performance from the losses of the first half of the year to the growth of the last quarter.
The same results were obtained in the total sales of Large Companies and SMEs, the indicator that collects quarterly data on the economic activity of more than 1.1 million companies. In Chart 1.10, in blue, you can see the initial sales growth of around 4%, which gradually slowed down until the last quarter, when there was an increase of 4.5%; In any case, all of them are rates much higher than those of 2024. The monthly indicator, which only reflects sales from large companies, albeit irregularly, also reproduced that same pattern.
The analysis of the activity is completed with the results of the Business Margin Observatory which adds to the current information coming from the statements of VAT and withholdings from work, the most structural information of the profit and loss accounts of Corporate Income Tax and of personal entrepreneurs in direct estimation. This allows us to see not only sales, purchases and salaries (which are already included in the Large Companies statistics and SMEs), but also the remaining costs and the gross operating profit, which is the approximation to EBITDA, one of the basic indicators of business activity. Thus, in Graphs 1.11 (1.11a companies and 1.11b personal businesses) the evolution of the generation of added value since 2017 is shown (in the Observatory you can also find the quarterly approximation and the sectoral detail). In 2025, a moderation in the growth of added value was observed, more intense in corporations than in sole proprietorships, despite the increase in sales analyzed above. For its part, Chart 1.12 illustrates the distribution of added value between personnel expenses and production-related profits through the percentage that gross profit represents on added value. In 2025, that percentage grew again in sole proprietorships, while it decreased slightly in corporations. However, in these cases the percentage is in line with what has been recorded in recent years and well above what was happening before the pandemic.
Regarding the pricesThe year began with the continuation of the inflationary surge that ended 2024 due to the rise in energy prices. After those first few months, inflation in consumer goods and services (CPI) moderated to return to the levels of the beginning of the year in the final stretch of the same. In industrial production prices (IPRI)However, the rise continued to slow until mid-year with price declines in the last quarter, which explains why, as seen before, sales in nominal terms showed that moderation profile throughout the year. Both processes can be seen clearly in Figure 1.13. On average per year, the CPI It ended up increasing by 2.7%, one tenth less than in 2024, and the IPRI It grew by 0.9% compared to the decline of the previous year.
Figure 1.14 allows the analysis to be done by isolating the impact of the energy component. In this case, we observe, on the one hand, the remarkable influence of this component on the evolution of the general indices, even after the years with the greatest turbulence in the energy sector, and, on the other hand, the growing trend of prices throughout the year, even though overall the price growth rates were lower than those of 2024.
Finally, the evolution in 2025 of labor market It could be defined as a situation of stable growth with respect to 2024. As is often the case, there are discrepancies between some indicators and others, although more in the behavior of employment within the year than in annual terms. Chart 1.15 illustrates the behavior of the occupancy. On average, annual growth was slightly lower than in 2024 when analyzing Social Security affiliation (2.3% in 2025, 2.4% previously, Table 1.2), with an upward trend in the second half of the year, while it increased moderately (from 2.8% to 3.1%) if you look at the full-time equivalent employment of the National Accounts, which is a measure that synthesizes the evolution of employment, hours and average working day. Throughout the year, the evolution of membership maintained a certain consistency with the trajectory of the activity, especially in the final months. In the salaried employment of the National Accounts (Graph 1.16) a slight acceleration was observed (one tenth in the whole of the year), while the salaried affiliates of the private sector showed a profile of moderation, going from 3.4% in 2024 to 2.9% in 2025.
