A BBVA report warns that Spanish GDP will sink 8 percent in 2020 before rebounding 5.7 percent next year. The financial services company’s dire prediction means that production levels won’t get back to their pre-crisis levels until 2022. The impact on jobs will be similarly severe, with BBVA predicting a 6.9 percent rise in unemployment, a figure that doesn’t even take into account the self-employed.
The new study is far gloomier than the company’s last report in January, predicting that 1 million jobs will be destroyed during 2020. BBVA’s head of economic analysis Rafael Doménech said that it will take Spain until 2023 to get its unemployment rate back down to its 2019 levels of 13 or 14 percent. The study is based on the premise that Spain maintains a lockdown of its citizens until the first part of May. If it were to be extended, warned the Bank of Spain, job destruction would be much worse.
