Cyclical|This Christmas, it can be hard to find comfort in chocolate too, because it’s so expensive.
Soon it becomes clear whether the European Central Bank will give mortgage debtors a “Christmas gift bill”. The central bank’s monetary policy decision-making council will publish its monetary policy decision on Thursday.
Nordea’s chief analyst Jan von Gerichin I said the Christmas gift bill would mean that the ECB would cut its key interest rate by 0.50 percentage points instead of 0.25 percentage points.
Aktia’s chief economist Lasse Corin however, is skeptical about whether even the drop in interest rates will improve the Christmas mood of Finns. According to him, comfort can become thin if you have to fear for your own job at the same time.
Unemployment is understandably weighing on one’s or another’s mind at the moment. At the end of November, Statistics Finland told that the trend of the unemployment rate has already risen in recent months to a higher level than at the time of the corona pandemic in 2020.
“The labor market plays a crucial role in raising the Christmas spirit. Unfortunately, for many, the improvement in purchasing power is not a relief, because the job has gone under,” Corin writes in his recent blog post.
Christmas spirit it doesn’t necessarily mean that bringing goodies to the Christmas table will be quite expensive this year.
Although the rise in consumer prices has subsided as a whole, inflation still reminds us of its existence in some products. They have chocolate one.
“The price of Christmas ham is at the level of last Christmas, but the price of chocolate has risen rapidly – in October, chocolate cost more than 22 percent more than a year before,” Corin points out in his blog.
“Therefore, I ate less pretzels this year.”
According to Corin, “Christmas inflation” is not only limited to chocolate.
“Even sending Christmas cards is 8 percent more expensive than last year.”
On his blog Corin comforts his reader by creating hope for next year’s Christmas. By then, the turn for the better may have already taken place.
The chief economist finds glimmers of light, for example, in companies’ employment intentions. According to him, employment prospects have clearly strengthened at least in the service and industrial sectors as well as in construction.
“The level of the indicators is not yet positive, but this time they will turn positive. At that point, unemployment also begins to decline. By this Christmas, companies’ prospects will not have time to change the situation of consumers, but in a year’s time, they will.”