National Statistical

Every year the ONS improves its estimate of the size of and growth in the UK economy – known as…

Gross Domestic Product – better known as ‘GDP’ – remains the leading internationally-recognised indicator of economic activity and growth. In common with other countries, the ONS updates methods and sources we use to measure the GDP of the United Kingdom. In this post, Craig McLaren takes us through this year’s improvements.   

Today we’ve released our annual revisions of the UK’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) covering the period up to 2022. As…

The UK economy has been affected by some unprecedented events in recent years, with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic followed immediately by the huge rise in energy costs due to the war in the Ukraine. For the ONS, these have increased the challenge of producing economic statistics that are both fast and accurate. Dramatic changes in the underlying data tend to bring added uncertainty to our initial estimates. As Craig McLaren explains, we are exploring ways to better portray this in our statistical outputs.   

Today the Office for National Statistics has brought previously announced updates for the pandemic period into its official GDP figures and updated its figures for 2022 and the first half of 2023. As Craig McLaren explains, after the improved picture for 2020 and 2021, today’s figures leave the picture of the UK economy over the last 18 months broadly unchanged.