According to the latest forecasts from the European Commission, by the end of 2025 Spain's GDP will have grown by 3% compared to 2024 and that of the Eurozone by 1,3%. Italy's? 0,4%Looking at the recent past, from the fourth quarter of 2019 (the last pre-Covid period) to the third quarter of 2025, Spanish GDP growth was a cumulative 9,8%, while Italian GDP growth was 6,5%. However, there is an interesting factor to note: until the end of 2022 Italy had grown more Compared to Spain, which had only recovered what was lost due to Covid, but then the trend reversed, why?
Secondo the CPI observatory “The data indicate that the better performance is due to the greater increase in employment and hourly productivity, while hours worked per employee grew more in Italy.”
Spain vs. Italy: a comparison of data
Italy and Spain have in common a demographic crisis Very serious. Madrid's is even more serious than ours. The fertility rate—the average number of children per woman—in Spain in 2023 was 1,12, compared to 1,21 in Italy.
Let's move on tooccupation, which in Spain has grown by 10,1% over the past six years, fueled by a large influx of migrants. "Their integration is facilitated by the fact that Spanish is spoken in much of Latin America, the main source of immigrants. Consequently, the working-age population is growing, and so is employment," notes the observatory directed by Carlo Cottarelli and Giampaolo Galli.
Employment in our country also grew, driven by a strong increase in labor force participation, but the increase was limited to 5,9%.
The total number of hours worked, which counts for GDP, increased more in Italy (9,4%) than in Spain (7,7%). This is because the hours worked per employee in Italy increased by 3,5%, while in Spain they decreased by 2,2%.
Productivity per hour worked
In addition to the higher increase in employment, the growth differential in favour of Spain “is therefore explained by the productivity per hour worked, "Which in that country grew by 2,1% in the period under consideration, while in Italy it decreased by 2,5%," explains the Italian Public Accounts Observatory, also providing a possible interpretation of these data: "the greater growth in hourly productivity in Spain" was "used partly to increase production and partly to reduce working hours. The increase in employment would then have made the difference in terms of total production."
