Posts by Craig McLaren

What is GDP and how do we measure it?

Craig McLaren
Categories: Data, Economy, Office for National Statistics, ONS
Car Factory Engineer in High Visibility Vest Using Laptop Computer in an Automotive Industrial Manufacturing Facility

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.  

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Updating our estimates of the pandemic’s effects on the UK’s economy – the new ONS estimates explained

Craig McLaren
Categories: ONS

The ONS has published updated, indicative, estimates for how much the economy shrank in 2020, when COVID-19 first hit. These numbers look a little different to our earlier takes on this challenging period. Craig McLaren explains what’s changed and why. 

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In the balance – How we are improving our estimates of GDP

Craig McLaren
Categories: ONS
Data

Over several years the ONS has been transforming the way we produce GDP and wider national accounts figures, introducing better data sources, systems and methods to produce significantly improved estimates of how money flows around the economy. Here Craig McLaren explains why new figures that will be used from the Autumn look a little different to previous estimates.  

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