rates, massive rates of foreign investment (during that period Spain had become a favorite of other European investment banks) and an immense surge in immigration. At its peak in 2007, construction had expanded to 15% of the total gross domestic product (GDP) of the country and 12% of total employment. During that time Spain capital inflows –including short term speculative investment– financed a large trade deficit. The downside of the real estate boom was a corresponding rise in the levels of private debt, both of households and of businesses; as prospective homeowners had struggled to meet asking prices, the average level of household debt tripled in less than a decade. This placed especially great pressure upon lower to middle income groups; by 2005 the median ratio of indebtedness to income had grown to 125%, due primarily to expensive boom time mortgages that now often exceed the value of the property. Noticeable progress continued until early 2008, when the global financial crisis burst Spain's property bubble. A European Commission forecast had predicted Spain would enter the world's late 2000s recession by the end of 2008. At the time, Spain's Economy Minister was quoted saying, "Spain is facing its deepest recession in half a century". Spain's government forecast the unemployment rate would rise to 16% in 2009. The ESADE business school predicted 20%. By 2017, Spain's GDP per capita had fallen back to 95% of the European Union's average. Economic and financial crisis, 2008-2012 Spain had continued on the path of economic growth when the ruling party changed in 2004, maintaining robust GDP growth during the first term of prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, even though some problems in the Spanish economy were becoming evident. According to the Financial Times, Spain's rapidly growing trade deficit, had reached 10% of the country's GDP by the summer of 2008, the "loss of competitiveness against its main trading partners" and, also, as a part of the latter, an inflation rate which had been traditionally higher than the one of its European partners, back then especially affected by house price increases of 150% from 1998 and a growing family indebtedness (115%) chiefly related to the Spanish Real Estate boom and rocketing oil prices. In April 2008, the Spanish government official GDP growth forecast was 2.3% but was revised down by the Spanish Ministry of Economy to 1.6. Studies by most independent forecasters estimated that the