, private - sector debt and the real estate market. the measures recently announced by the european central bank ( ecb ), aimed at containing the risk of the euro area running an excessively low inflation rate over a prolonged period, likewise contribute to bolstering the growth outlook for our economy and assisting the adjustment under way. but let us not forget that the crisis – complete with double - dip recession – in the spanish economy has had a most severe impact on employment and income levels, and has caused a most pronounced setback in terms of real convergence with europe. merely restoring pre - crisis levels of well - being will take several years. evidently, here, maintaining the reform drive is crucial for speeding the process of recovery of the levels of economic prosperity lost due to the crisis. bis central bankers ’ speeches 2. banking sector : situation following the reform the spanish banking sector has concluded a far - reaching transformation, entailing the cleanup, restructuring and recapitalisation of the most vulnerable banks, all resulting from the transformation of the former savings banks. the consequences of this reform have been reviewed on various occasions, so i need not detail them here. allow me merely to summarise the three key elements of the process. i ) firstly, the reform has driven an intense restructuring and re - sizing of the banking industry, enabling its excess capacity to be corrected. of note has been the integration of savings banks into existing or newly created banking groups, which has enabled the number of credit institutions to be reduced by over 30. banks have in the past two years also stepped up the process of re - sizing initiated at the onset of the crisis. overall, in the last six years, the sector has reduced numbers of offices and employees by around 25 %. this has appreciably strengthened the average operational efficiency of the sector. ii ) secondly, bank balance sheets have been subject to an intense clean - up. this has enabled one of the main sources of vulnerability of the spanish banking sector, namely its excessive exposure to the real estate sector, to be defused. in particular, claims on the real estate sector, including loans and foreclosures net of provisions, declined by close to 60 % from december 2011 to december 2013. this has been possible mainly thanks to three fundamental factors : i ) the increase in provisioning requirements established in 2012 by royal decree - law, ii ) the revision of the classification and level of provisioning of restructured and refinanced loans

- 29 ), falling at a rate of 12. 8 % in q3, compared with the decline of 5. 9 % among those aged 30 - 44 and the 1. 4 % increase among the over - 45s. in the case of young people, there has been a 7 pp increase in the unemployment rate to 31. 4 % compared with 2019 q3. by level of educational attainment, the fall in employment for workers with lower studies ( - 13. 8 % ) was far higher than that observed among those with intermediate studies ( - 4. 6 % ), while there was a year - on - year increase of 1. 5 % among employees with higher studies. for further details, see the banco de espana annual report 2019, box 4. 2, “ the employment income and financial situation of the workers most affected by covid - 19 ”. sectors, these new restrictions could also bear down directly ( and not only through knockon effects ) on the degree of robustness of the other productive sectors. in these extraordinarily uncertain circumstances, a very significant deterioration is in any event expected in the spanish economy ’ s levels of activity and employment, and in its public finances for 2020 as a whole. and this negative impact will, moreover, be relatively persistent. in particular, taking the above - mentioned banco de espana scenario 1, gdp would contract by 10. 5 % in 2020 ( 12. 6 % under scenario 2 ), and pre - crisis levels of activity would not be regained until late 2022, when the level of gdp would still be some 2 pp below that recorded at end - 2019 ( more than 6 pp below in scenario 2 ). and this despite the fact that output would grow with some momentum in 2021 and 2022, at rates of 7. 3 % and 1. 9 % under scenario 1, and of 4. 1 % and 3. 3 % under scenario 2. this adverse impact of the pandemic on spanish gdp would generally be more marked than that which most developed countries would undergo. indeed, institutions such as the imf, the oecd and the european commission have testified as much in their forecasts. this would be the consequence of the conjunction of several factors. they include the relatively more unfavourable course of the pandemic in our country. thus, for instance, at the height of the first wave, the number of daily deaths per 1, 000, 000 inhabitants stood at over 17 in spain