QIII-2018 QUARTERLY REPORT GERMANY
German economy keeps on growing GDP rises just under two percent in first half of 2018
The upturn is continuing but no longer at the rate anticipated. We thus need to revise our growth forecast from early 2018. We now expect real economic output to increase by only two percent over last year (until now: 2.25 percent).
We have also revised our export expectations. In the first half of the year, German exports only increased by around three percent in real terms. We now expect to see an increase of 3.5 percent for the year overall (until now: five percent).
GDP has now increased every quarter for the past thirteen quarters after price, calendar and seasonal adjustment. Year-on-year, quarterly GDP increased for the 23rd consecutive time. Production capacity utilisation in industry remains high (87.7 percent) – 4.6 percentage points higher than the average of the last ten years.
Investment growth has been much lower so far this year than we expected. The investment cycle has not yet come to an end, but momentum is much lower than in past investment cycles.
The economic output in the second quarter 2018 was generated by a workforce of 44.8 million employees. That is around 600,000 or 1.4 percent more than last year. Employment growth in manufacturing was above average with 124,000 new jobs (up 1.6 percent).