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More pessimism over Swedish economy

TT/The Local
TT/The Local - [email protected]
More pessimism over Swedish economy

Swedes’ view of the economy continues to deteriorate according to a new report by the Skop opinion research company.

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At the end of December, Skop’s macro index, which measures household expectations about the Swedish economy, dropped to a historic low of -69.1, down 4.1 points since November, reports the Dagens Industri newspaper.

Meanwhile, Skop’s microindex, which measures expectations about personal finances, rose slightly to -5.9 in December from -6.6 in November.

“Pessimism already dominated among Swedes before the latest financial crisis and before the recession which is now hitting the real economy. In just over a year, since the summer of 2007, we’ve had a downward trend with successively increasing pessimism,” said Skop analyst Örjan Hultåker in a statement.

Hultåker added that the discrepancy between the micro- and macro-indices was “unusually large”.

“It’s often the case that Swedes are more positive about their personal finances than the country’s economy, but now the gap is extremely large,” said Hultåker.

Roughly three out of four (77.2 percent) Swedes think the Swedish economy is going to get worse in 2009, a 4 percent increase since November.

More Swedes are also pessimistic rather than optimistic when it comes to their personal finances.

Roughly one in every five Sweden thinks their standard of living will drop in the coming year, a figure more or less unchanged from Skop’s November measurements.

Around 1,000 Swedes were interviewed between December 11th and December 30th for the study.

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