The gross domestic product, GDP, describes the size of a country’s economy and is calculated by adding up the value of all goods and services produced in the country during a certain period, either a quarter or a year. By dividing GDP by the number of inhabitants, GDP per capita, you get an approximate picture of how rich the country is.
A long-term interruption in growth occurred during the early 1990s when GDP declined three years in a row. The next major downturn came in the early 2000s when the economy was hit first by the IT crash of 2000 and shortly thereafter by the downturn that followed in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Then in 2008 the global financial crisis hit and caused a very deep downturn . In 2009, Sweden’s GDP shrank by over 4 percent, which was the largest measured decline for a single year since 1950.
After the financial crisis, there was first a rapid recovery with very high growth in 2010, but the deepening debt crisis in the euro area caused the economy to slow down again shortly afterwards. The debt crisis prolonged the recession and it would take until 2016 before Sweden entered a boom again. The peak of this boom was reached in 2018. At first it looked like there would be a relatively gentle slowing down of the economy, but at the end of the first quarter of 2020, the corona crisis struck and changed the conditions completely and the economy entered a recession. In the second quarter of 2020, GDP decreased by 8.1 percent compared to the previous quarter. It was the largest decline recorded during the period when quarterly measurements were taken from 1980. Since then, GDP has recovered and is now above the level before the corona crisis. Forecasts about how GDP will grow in the future are uncertain, but most forecasters see fairly normal growth in the next few years.
By clicking on the smaller charts, you can study the GDP development on a quarterly or annual basis. You can also choose between series that show growth in percent or GDP in kroner. All series are expressed in fixed prices, which means that price changes have been excluded or, somewhat simplified, adjusted for inflation. You can find a more detailed review of Sweden’s GDP for the past year here. An overview of the historical GDP development can be found here.
Today, GDP is one of the most central measures in the national economy, but it has not always been this way. Here, Klas Eklund explains how the discipline has developed and which questions have been in focus for studies of the social economy.