News headlines this month proclaimed the UK has ‘narrowly avoided recession’. In ‘Recessions, GDP and Beyond’, the latest episode of our ‘Statistically Speaking’ podcast, we decode the ‘r’ word and explain why this sometimes misleading term is one the ONS is often cautious to avoid.
Read more on The ‘R’ Word: What exactly is a ‘recession’ anyway?
Gross Domestic Product, more commonly known as GDP, remains the world’s most closely-watched economic indicator. Its growth – or lack of it – is used to measure economic progress. A positive GDP reading suggests an economy is growing, a negative one that it’s slowing down. But there is much more to GDP that just one number. In this post Craig McLaren is our guide to how GDP is calculated and how it’s best understood.
Read more on What is GDP and how do we measure it?
Next week, ONS is making an important improvement to the way it publishes GDP figures. James Scruton explains why this change is taking place and how it will give policy makers access to more data, quicker.
Read more on Monthly GDP: More information, faster
Covering a multitude of widely diverse businesses from multinationals to one-person bands engaged in activities from domestic plumbing to building skyscrapers, the construction sector is notoriously difficult to measure. Yet it accounts for approximately six per cent of the UK’s GDP and is a heavily scrutinised part of the economy. Delivering better construction statistics has been a recent priority for ONS. Here Ceri Lewis explains what’s been achieved so far.
Read more on Solid foundations: how ONS has transformed its construction statistics
After 70 years of production Gross Domestic Product (GDP) remains the single most closely watched economic indicator. The success of government economic policy is judged against it and it’s the yardstick for the scale of public spending and debt. As Rob Kent-Smith explains, calculating GDP requires the informed balancing of sometimes contradictory data sources.
Read more on Getting the balance right – how ONS creates a single estimate of GDP
