The construction and promotion of housing already represents almost 7% of the GDP of Catalonia. This is confirmed by the monograph “The construction and promotion sector in the Catalan economy”, by the Housing and Future Business Chair of the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and the Association of Developers and Builders of Catalonia (APCE). The document calculates the economic impact of the sector’s activity on the Catalan economy: production, gross value added (VAB) as an approximation to gross domestic product (GDP), and employment, as well as tax collection.
The report indicates that the sector’s activity generates a production of 47,221 million euros, a GVA of 24,300 million euros and a total of 398,647 full-time equivalent jobs (FTE). The GVA figure represents 11.9% of the total, a value that represents a drag effect on the sector equivalent to 6.93% of the Catalan GDP.
The activity generated by the sector directly, indirectly and induced also entails tax revenues via taxes (VAT, personal income tax and companies) and Social Security contributions of 7,056 million euros. In fact, it is estimated that 20% of the price of the house is a fiscal cost, including state, Catalan and municipal taxes. Another objective of the study is to calculate the links between construction and development with the rest of the productive sectors. Thus, each euro spent in Catalonia by the sector generates 0.89 euros of GVA in the Catalan economy as a result of the direct and indirect effect, and 1.29 euros if the induced effect is added. Consequently, construction and promotion can be considered as a driver of the economy.
The study also shows that if the construction and development sector stopped acquiring its intermediate inputs in Catalonia, there would be a 1% drop in the GDP (added value) of the Catalan economy (carrying capacity). Likewise, the rest of the sectors stop acquiring inputs from the sector, the fall in the production of the Catalan economy would be 2% (support capacity).
The study also indicates that the weight of the construction and development sector in the Catalan economy has changed considerably in the last 20 years. In the gross added value (VAB) of the Catalan economy, it increased considerably until 2006 (11.90%) and, from then on, an adjustment process began until reaching around 5%, a percentage that remains relatively constant from 2013 to today.
Regarding the labor market, the report indicates, on the contrary, that the employment rate in the sector fell by half, from around 12% (2007 and 2008), to 5.98% (2014). Since then, the occupancy rate has remained around 6%, 6.21% in 2021.
The report was prepared by Jaume Garcia, professor in the Department of Business at UPF; Júlia Bosch, researcher at the Sports_Lab Study Center (UPF); Catalina Llaneza, professor at the TecnoCampus-UPF, and Josep Maria Raya, professor at the TecnoCampus-UPF and director of the chair. To do this, the authors have used the input-output methodology and the usual indicators using data from the 2016 “Framework input output of Catalonia (MIOC)”, by the Statistics Institute of Catalonia (Idescat).
The APCE-UPF Housing and Future Chair is a business chair in the legal-economic-social discipline linked to the real estate sector, created jointly by the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and the Association of Developers and Builders of Catalonia (APCE). Its main objective is to promote teaching, research and the dissemination of knowledge in this field.
