A decade of data from the Silver Institute, visualized by Elements by Visual Capitalist, shows how the global silver market flipped from balanced to persistently short after 2020. From 2015 through 2020, supply and demand tracked closely, with the market posting small surpluses in most years and only a narrow 5 million ounce deficit in 2015.

That changed in 2021, when demand jumped to 1,112 million ounces against supply of 1,023 million ounces, producing an 89 million ounce deficit. The imbalance widened sharply in 2022, when demand surged to a record 1,306 million ounces while supply grew only modestly to 1,034 million ounces, leaving the largest deficit on record at 272 million ounces.

Deficits have persisted every year since, estimated at 210 million ounces in 2023, 151 million ounces in 2024, and roughly 95 million ounces in 2025. Total supply, meanwhile, has stayed largely range-bound between 974 million and 1,057 million ounces across the full ten-year span, underscoring how little mine output and recycling have grown relative to demand.

The chart credits much of the sustained demand growth to green-energy applications: solar panels, electric vehicles, and power grid infrastructure all rely on silver's conductivity, and that industrial pull combined with a rebound in jewelry, bar, and coin buying to keep deficits wide even as prices climbed from the $15 to $17 range in 2015-2019 to more than $80 an ounce in 2025.

Source: Elements by Visual Capitalist - https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/charted-silver-supply-demand-imbalance-2015-2025/