ab26 January 2024Global Research and Evidence LabEuropean Economic PerspectivesSweden: Outlook for 2024A summary of our views on growth, inflation and monetary policyIn this note, we lay out our expectations for growth, the labour market, inflation and monetary policy for Sweden. We also highlight key charts on the topics. Growth: Sweden in recessionSweden has been in a technical recession since Q2 2023, and GDP has declined by a cumulative 1.1% compared with Q1 2023 - a more pronounced slowdown than in the eurozone. The GDP decline has been led by a contraction in the interest rate sensitive parts of the economy, i.e. household consumption and construction investment; while net exports, business investment and government spending have contributed positively to growth. Forward-looking indicators point to weak growth continuing for some time. Hence, we expect the recession to continue until Q1 2024 (with some upside risks in the near term), followed by moderately positive growth rates through the remainder of 2024. In 2024, rising real incomes and a robust labour market should lead to a recovery in household consumption. A large part of the pass-through of rate hikes likely lies behind, and the rate cuts we expect from the Riksbank in 2024 are likely to benefit the economy fairly quickly as of late 2024 and 2025. We expect GDP growth of -0.4% in 2023, -0.3% in 2024, 2.1% in 2025 and 2.8% in 2026. Labour market: Resilient, but with some signs of emerging weaknessLike in other advanced economies, the Swedish labour market has been relatively resilient, despite the recession. One of the key reasons is likely to be the growing shortages of labour due to the demographic transition, which is prompting corporates to hoard labour. However, there are signs that the labour market has started to weaken, and we expect the unemployment rate to pick up from 7.9% currently to a peak at 8.5% in Q3 2024. Inflation: We expect CPIF inflation to reach close to 2% by H2 2024 CPIF inflation has declined from its peak of 10.2% y/y in December 2022 to 2.3% in December 2023, with energy the biggest driver of the fall. While core goods inflation has declined, the pace of the decline has been slower in Sweden than in the eurozone, probably due to the depreciation of the Swedish krona. Services inflation remains at elevated levels. Barring a temporary rise in January 2024, we expect CPIF inflation to continue to fall and reach close to 2% by H2 2024. Overall we expect average CPIF inflation to decline from 6.0% in 2023 to 2.5% in 2024, 1.8% in 2025 and 2.0% in 2026. We expect CPIF ex energy inflation to decline from 7.5% to 3.3% in 2024 and 2.2% in both 2025 and 2026. The weakness in growth (driven by tight monetary policy) should continue to contribute to the fall in inflation, along with fading supply shocks. According to sur...