The decrease in capacity utilisation in industry in the third quarter led to an decrease in the level of utilisation, which amounted to 88.8 percent in seasonally adjusted figures.

On an annual basis, capacity utilisation increased compared with the third quarter of 2024 and amounted to 88.5 percent in calendar adjusted figures.

The figures for the third quarter of 2025 are preliminary. Since the previous publication capacity utilisation in the second quarter of 2025 has been revised upwards by 0.5 percentage points with the utilisation rate 89.0 percent, in seasonally adjusted figures.

In calendar adjusted figures capacity utilisation in the second quarter of 2025 has been revised upwards by 0.7 percentage points to a utilisation rate of 89.6 percent.

Please note that the publication of industrial capacity utilisation will cease after the release of data for the fourth quarter of 2025. For more information, see the section titled “Other Information.”

Reasons for Lower Capacity Utilisation

When businesses have a capacity utilisation rate of less than 100 percent, they must specify a primary reason for the lower capacity utilisation. The response options are fixed, and only one option can be selected. The shares of responses for each reason are distributed according to the diagram below. The responses are unweighted, unlike the capacity utilisation, which is weighted by industrial turnover.

The reasons that experienced the largest increase in shares compared to the previous quarter was the category “other”, which increased from 5.8 percent to 10.2 percent. The reason that primarily had the largest decrease in shares compared to the previous quarter was “lack of demand”, which decreased from 60.9 percent to 57.8 percent.

Statistics on reasons for lower capacity utilisation are available in the statistical database with a time period stretching back to the first quarter of 1998. The purpose of the statistics is to better explain changes in capacity utilisation. Please note that this part of the statistics is under development and may change.

Other information

Discontinuation of Industrial Capacity Utilisation

The publication of industrial capacity utilisation will cease after the release of data for the fourth quarter of 2025, which will be published in February 2026.

The background to this decision is that, as of January 2025, the Business Tendency Survey is included in official statistics. This means that both Statistics Sweden’s and the National Institute of Economic Research’s (NIER) measures of capacity utilisation are now part of the official statistics. Statistics Sweden has assessed that it is not necessary to have two official measures of capacity utilisation, which has led to the decision to discontinue the survey.

The product page will remain available for at least one year to facilitate the transition and enable comparisons between the surveys conducted by NIER and Statistics Sweden. As support, there is also an in-depth article explaining the differences in capacity utilisation levels between the surveys. The article also includes a final table comparing the design of the two surveys. The full analysis can be read on the Statistics Sweden´s website Industrial capacity utilisation (scb.se) under the heading "Fördjupad information".

Differences in Industrial Capacity Utilisation Levels

Statistics Sweden and The National Institute of Economic Research (NIER) have been publishing statistics on capacity utilisation in the manufacturing industry for about 30 years. The results from Statistics Swedens survey have consistently been at a higher level than those of NIER. A joint comparison between SCB and NIER has been made to explain the reason for this difference in levels. The full analysis can be read (only in Swedish) on the Statistics Sweden´s website Industrial capacity utilisation (scb.se) under the heading "Fördjupad information".

Revisions

When capacity utilisation for a new quarter is published, the percentages for the previous quarter are also revised. Normally, the figures for the previous quarter are revised mainly due to new and revised information.