to 2. 5 per cent in july, when measured as the hicp. underlying hicp inflation excluding energy and unprocessed foods also fell in july, to 1. 5 per cent. at the monetary policy meeting in july i said that developments in the united states were troublesome. both monetary policy and fiscal policy must be tightened there in the longer run, which will subdue growth. a strong, self - supporting recovery is therefore needed, a recovery that does not depend on short - term cyclical policy stimulation, to ensure a tangible improvement in the labour market. we cannot see this type of strong growth yet. it is also a common pattern that a financial crisis is followed by several years of weak growth. 2 i also noted at the july meeting that there was a tendency in the united states and europe towards stagflation, with low growth and high inflation at the same time. developments over the summer reinforce this image, but this does not mean that things will necessarily continue in the same way. … but developments in sweden largely in line with the forecasts in sweden we have received the first preliminary national accounts figures for the second quarter of this year, and new statistics for the labour market and inflation, for instance. gdp growth was slightly higher in the second quarter than we were counting on in july. seasonally - adjusted quarterly growth came out at 1. 0 per cent, against an expected 0. 6 per cent. although both domestic demand and exports were marginally weaker than the riksbank had forecast, imports, which are a deduction item when calculating gdp, were even weaker. this means that gdp growth was slightly higher than expected. i expressed some concern at the monetary policy meeting in july that the second quarter would be weaker than our forecast in the monetary policy report. this was not the case, which in itself is a good thing. but at the same time, more forward - looking indicators such as the purchasing managers ’ index and the national institute of economic research ’ s economic tendency surveys point to economic activity slowing down. this is something that we have already counted on. however, the purchasing managers ’ index has fallen more than expected, which indicates that the slowdown may be greater than estimated ( see figure 10 ). the labour force survey statistics show that the labour market continued to improve in june. employment rose by just over 2 per cent, compared with the same month last year, and unemployment fell, when seasonally - adjusted, to 7. 5 per

that measure levels. for example, this applies to the shortage of labour in the business sector and capacity utilisation in the manufacturing industry. these have both increased recently and it cannot be ruled out that these will reach normal levels by the end of this year. ( figure 8. shortage of labour in the business sector and capacity utilisation in the manufacturing industry ). it is also interesting to compare shortage of labour with unemployment. these co - varied significantly before the crisis. however, shortage of labour is now increasing more rapidly than unemployment is falling. this indicates that there may be significant matching problems in the labour market long before unemployment comes down to a normal level. ( figure 9. shortage of labour in the business sector and unemployment ). at the riksbank, we have also developed a special indicator to measure resource utilisation, the so - called ru indicator. 11 this uses a principal component method to extract common information from a large number of business cycle indicators in levels. the ru indicator also indicates that resource utilisation in sweden was about as high in 2007 as at the previous peak in 2000. this contrasts with the gdp gap based on hp trends, which was much higher in 2007 than in 2000. ( figure 10. the gdp gap and the ru indicator ). an indication of the significance of the crisis for potential industrial production can also be obtained by combining statistics on industrial production and capacity utilisation. 12 industrial production fell by a maximum amount of 24 per cent from its peak in the first quarter of 2008 to its lowest point in the second quarter of 2009. potential industrial production fell by 14 per cent with a time lag of two to three quarters and by approximately 20 per cent in relation to a more detailed description of the ru indicator and its characteristics will be published shortly. potential industrial production has been calculated as [ industrial production ] x [ average capacity utilisation 1996 – 2007 ] / [ capacity utilisation ]. the previous trend. such a fall in potential industrial production could explain a fall of approximately 4 per cent in potential gdp, as the level of value added in the manufacturing industry was equivalent to approximately 20 per cent of gdp prior to the crisis. ( figure 11. industrial production, capacity utilisation and potential industrial production ). to sum up, i can note that potential gdp and resource utilisation are difficult to estimate. different methods give different results. this is particularly difficult right now due to the financial crisis and the deep recession from which we are