The United Kingdom's economy grew by 1.1 percent in 2024, after a growth rate of 0.4 percent in 2023, 4.8 percent in 2022, 8.6 percent in 2021, and a record 10.3 percent fall in 2020. During the provided time period, the biggest annual fall in gross domestic product before 2020 occurred in 2009, when the UK economy contracted by 4.6 percent at the height of the global financial crisis of the late 2000s. Before 2021, the year with the highest annual GDP growth rate was 1973, when the UK economy grew by 6.5 percent. UK economy growing but GDP per capita falling In 2022, the UK's GDP per capita amounted to approximately 37,371 pounds, with this falling to 37,028 pounds in 2023, and 36,977 pounds in 2024. While the UK economy as a whole grew during this time, the UK's population grew at a faster rate, resulting in the negative growth in GDP per capita. This suggests the UK economy's struggles with productivity are not only stagnating, but getting worse. The relatively poor economic performance of the UK in recent years has not gone unnoticed by the electorate, with the economy consistently seen as the most important issue for voters since 2022. Recent shocks to UK economy In the second quarter of 2020, the UK economy shrank by a record 20.3 percent at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although there was a relatively swift economic recovery initially, the economy has struggled to grow much beyond its pre-pandemic size, and was only around 3.1 percent larger in December 2024, when compared with December 2019. Although the labor market has generally been quite resilient during this time, a long twenty-month period between 2021 and 2023 saw prices rise faster than wages, and inflation surge to a high of 11.1 percent in October 2022.

This project will explore the impact of the economic recession on cities and households through a systematic comparison of the experiences of two English cities, Bristol and Liverpool.The research will use both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Interviews will be held in both cities with stakeholders from across the public, private and voluntary and community sectors. A social survey of 1000 households will also be conducted in the two cities covering 10 specific household types. A series of in-depth qualitative interviews will then be held with households drawn from the survey and chosen to illustrate the spectrum of experience.In the context of globalisation and the rescaling of cities and states, the research aims to develop our understanding of the relationship between economic crisis, global connectivity and the transnational processes shaping cities and the everyday lives of residents. It will explore the 'capillary-like' impact of the crisis and austerity measures on local economic development, and local labour and housing markets, as well as highlight the intersecting realities of everyday life for households across the life course.The research will document the responses and coping strategies developed across different household types and evaluate the impact and effectiveness of 'anti-recession' strategies and policies.

The classification of finiancial crisis interventions

Source agency: Office for National Statistics

Designation: Supporting material

Language: English

Alternative title: Financial Crisis and Statitical Classification

With the onset of the Global Financial Crisis in the late Summer of 2007, the United Kingdom was one of the first countries to experience financial panic after the United States. In September 2007, the bank Northern Rock became the UK's first bank to collapse in 150 years due to a bank run, as depositors reacted to the announcement that the bank would be seeking emergency liquidity support from the Bank of England by lining up outside their bank branches to withdraw money. The failure of Northern Rock was a bad omen for the UK economy and financial sector, as banks stopped lending to each other and to customers in what became known as the 'credit crunch'. Government bailouts, private bailouts By October 2008, many UK banks were facing a situation where if they did not receive external assistance, then they would have to default on their debts and likely have to declare bankruptcy. The UK's Labour government, led by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, announced that it would provide emergency funds to stabilize the banking system, leading to the part or full nationalization of some of Britain's largest financial firms. Specifically, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB, and HBOS received over 35 billion pounds in a government cash injection, while Barclays opted to seek investment from private investors in order to avoid nationalization, much of which came from the state of Qatar. The bailouts caused UK government debt ratios to almost double over the period of the crisis, while public trust in the financial system sank.

The gross domestic product of the United Kingdom was around 2.56 trillion British pounds, an increase when compared to the previous year, when UK GDP amounted to about 2.54 trillion pounds. The significant drop in GDP visible in 2020 was due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the smaller declines in 2008 and 2009 because of the global financial crisis of the late 2000s. Low growth problem in the UK Despite growing by 0.9 percent in 2024, and 0.4 percent in 2023 the UK economy is not that much larger than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. Since recovering from a huge fall in GDP in the second quarter of 2020, the UK economy has alternated between periods of contraction and low growth, with the UK even in a recession at the end of 2023. While economic growth picked up somewhat in 2024, GDP per capita is lower than it was in 2022, following two years of negative growth. UK's global share of GDP falling As of 2024, the UK had the sixth-largest economy in the world, behind the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and India. Among European nations, this meant that the UK currently has the second-largest economy in Europe, although the economy of France, Europe's third-largest economy, is of a similar size. The UK's global economic ranking will likely fall in the coming years, however, with the UK's share of global GDP expected to fall from 2.16 percent in 2025 to 2.02 percent by 2029.  

The statistic shows the GDP of the United Kingdom between 1987 and 2024, with projections up until 2030, in US dollars.Private-sector-led economic recoveryGDP is counted among the primary indicators that are used to gauge the state of health of a national economy. GDP is the total value of all completed goods and services that have been produced within a country in a given period of time, usually a year. GDP figures allow us to gain a broader understanding of a country’s economy in a clear way. Real GDP, in a similar way, is also a rather useful indicator; this is a measurement that takes prices changes (inflation and deflation) into account, thereby acting as a key indicator for economic growth.The gross domestic product of the United Kingdom is beginning to show signs of recovery since seeing a sharp decline in the wake of the financial crisis. The decreasing unemployment rate in the United Kingdom is also indicating that the worst could be over for the country. However, some concerns have arisen about what forms of employment are being represented, how stable the jobs are, and whether or not they are simply being cited by officials in government as validation for reforms that are criticized by opponents as being ‘ideologically motivated’. Whatever the political motivation, the coalition government’s efforts to let the private sector lead the economic recovery through increasing employment in the UK in the private sector appear, for now at least, to be working.

In 2024, gross domestic product per capita in the United Kingdom was 37,044 British pounds, compared with 37,033 pounds in the previous year. In general, while GDP per capita has grown quite consistently throughout this period, there are noticeable declines, especially between 2007 and 2009, and between 2019 and 2020, due to the Global Financial Crisis, and COVID-19 pandemic, respectively. Why is GDP per capita stagnating when the economy is growing? During the last two years that GDP per capita fell and then stagnated in the UK, the overall economy grew by 0.4 percent in 2023 and 1.1 percent in 2024. While the overall UK economy is therefore larger than it was in 2022, the UK's population has grown at a faster rate, resulting in the lower GDP per capita figure. The long-term slump in the UK's productivity, as measured by output per hour worked, has meant that the gap between GDP growth and GDP per capita growth has been widening for some time. Economy remains the main concern of UK voters As of February 2025, the economy was seen as the main issue facing the UK, just ahead of immigration, health, and several other problems in the country. While Brexit was seen as the most important issue before COVID-19, and concerns about health were dominant throughout 2020 and 2021, the economy has generally been the primary facing voters issue since 2022. The surge in inflation throughout 2022 and 2023, and the impact this had on wages and living standards, resulted in a very tough period for UK households. As of January 2025, 57 percent of households were still noticing rising living costs, although this is down from a peak of 91 percent in August 2022.

In June 2024, the household cost inflation rate (HCI) for low-income households in the United Kingdom was 1.7 percent, compared with 2.3 percent for middle-income households, and 3.3 percent for high-income households. Unlike other measures of inflation such as the consumer price index (CPI) the HCI isn't based on a fixed basket of goods, but is weighted to show how price changes affect different households by their economic status.

This corpus is part of my PhD project entitled 'Constrained Partisanship: A Comparative Study of Policy Choices and Party Discourses in the British and Spanish Crisis Experiences (2008-2014)'. The dataset contains transcripts of 45 speeches and parliamentary interventions on macroeconomic policy from government leaders in Spain and the United Kingdom between 2008 and 2014. This bilingual corpus (in English and Spanish) has been manually compiled from publicly available sources: websites of national parliaments, official government sites, research databases and party websites. All documents are available in open file format.

The corpus as a whole is shared under a CC BY licence but the dataset contains individual publicly available political speeches that are released under their own licences and have their own copyright holders. If reusing any of the individual political speeches then please refer to the original source and licence information as outlined in the file 'PIQUER_Corpus description.csv', paying particular attention to the information in the following columns: 'Original source' and 'Licence'.

Graph and download economic data for OECD based Recession Indicators for the United Kingdom from the Peak through the Trough (DISCONTINUED) (GBRRECDM) from 1955-02-01 to 2022-09-30 about peak, trough, recession indicators, and United Kingdom.

Short Overview of the Project: Unfolding a Global Market in Difficult Times – The British Chamber of Commerce for Switzerland 1920 – 1950

By the end of 1919, as the economy began to recover from the impact of the First World War, J.R. Cahill, the Commercial Secretary of the British Legation in Bern, traveled through Switzerland. His journey was not an ordinary task but a step towards addressing post-war economic challenges. Meeting with British nationals such as bankers, merchants, businessmen, and transport agents across various cities, Cahill laid the groundwork for what would later become the British Chamber of Commerce for Switzerland, or the BSCC in short. Chambers of commerce operate on regional, national, and international levels, each defining its own scope, focus, structure, and function, making a universal definition difficult. Generally, they are privately organized cross-sector collaborations, which can adapt rapidly to changing political, economic, and social environments. Therefore, the BSCC was an ideal vessel for Cahill’s envisioned network, providing the adaptability needed to build a strong economic actor in Switzerland for supporting and rebuilding the economic ties between Britain and Switzerland after World War I. The BSCC was officially founded in Basel in 1920, with a branch office in Lausanne. This was relatively late, as many foreign chambers were already operating in Switzerland, and British Chambers had been expanding abroad since the late 19th century. The post-war conditions and economic crisis made it difficult to build a robust institution. However, the BSCC navigated this period, expanded its network, and continued its services without interruption. Over time, it became an integral part of Anglo-Swiss relations, a role it still plays today. The BSCC’s unexpected success during such difficult times challenges earlier assessments of chambers of commerce. The BSCC did not generate material or financial capital in a traditional sense, but relied on networking power at regional, national and global levels, which proved valuable to businessmen and governments. Throughout the interwar period, the BSCC built a network that developed an unexpected sustainability in view of the many crises that foreshadowed the Second World War. This unexpected and underinvestigated sustainability is at the core of my interest.

In my analysis, I combine micro-global history, institutional economics, and digital humanities to explore the BSCC’s evolution and its ability to sustain itself amid external pressures. I argue that its significance goes beyond traditional institutional history and must be understood in the context of the global networks it built, particularly during crises. A central part of my approach is using digital methods such as text mining, database construction, and network analysis to enhance traditional historical sources. These tools provide both quantitative and qualitative insights, enabling a deeper exploration of fragmented sources like the British-Swiss trade indices. They allow us to investigate the BSCC from a different perspective and gain insights into global trade from a privately organized institutional point of view rather than traditional governmental views. Digital humanities methods allow for the visualization of historical networks and source material, revealing connections and developments across time and space that complement and expand upon traditional archival research. By focusing on often-overlooked smaller actors, my research highlights how the BSCC’s global network facilitated critical links between economic actors in Britain, Switzerland, and beyond. This micro-global perspective offers a more nuanced understanding of global economic relations and the impact of actors on broader political and economic developments. Ultimately, this interdisciplinary approach provides new insights into the BSCC’s role in global capitalism and demonstrates the potential of digital methods to enrich our understanding of global networks and economic infrastructures.

Economic crisis management has concerned governments and other responsible authorities from 2008. Yet crises are complex and subject to many attempts to interpret and explain them, to identify causes, attribute responsibility, assess their scale, scope, and significance, the need for minor changes or major reforms, and translate proposed solutions into feasible policies. This trans-disciplinary research project focuses on the complex and multi-faceted economic crisis that became evident in 2007 and will explore these issues through to 2011. Its key research questions are:

have accounts of the 'crisis' changed from 2007 and which interpretations have become dominant; do the main varieties of capitalism have different forms of crisis within this context and/or do they favour different interpretations and solutions; what new approaches to crisis-management have been proposed and how are they evaluated; have crisis dynamics prompted new forms of multi-level governance and meta-governance.

Different literatures and methodologies are used to answer these questions, respectively: corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis; actor-centred institutional analysis of varieties of capitalism and their place in the world market; studies of governance and governmentality; and studies on the EU's open method of coordination as sources of insight into global crisis-management. Further information CPECM contact: Prof Robert Jessop

Email: r.jessop@lancaster.ac.uk

ESRC contact: Rachael Tyrrell

Email:rachael.tyrrell@esrc.ac.uk Telephone: 01793 444518

Cultural Political Economy Research Centre website: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/cperc/index.htm

In 2025, the annual unemployment rate of the United Kingdom is expected to be *** percent, compared with *** percent in 2024. Unemployment is forecast to fall to *** percent in 2026, gradually declining to *** percent by 2028. In the UK's last government budget in October 2024, the country's unemployment rate for 2025 was forecast to average out at *** percent, but this was increased to *** percent in the "Spring Statement" on public finances in March 2025. Uptick in unemployment after falling to historic lows A common indicator of an economy’s relative health, the unemployment rate in the UK generally fell throughout most of the 2010s, after reaching *** percent in late 2011. After a sudden increase in unemployment during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a steep decline that lasted until August 2022, when the unemployment rate was just *** percent. There was then a rise in unemployment from 2023 onwards, which continued throughout 2024 and into 2025. This has been matched by a fall in UK job vacancies, which peaked at *** million in May 2022, but has been falling in most months since then, with approximately ******* vacancies in February 2025. Revisions to GDP and inflation for 2025 Since the global financial crisis of the late 2000s, and especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK's economic growth has been poor, with the UK alternating between weak growth and slight contractions. For 2025, the UK economy is set to grow by just *** percent, a downgrade from *** percent predicted in late 2024. Inflation, which skyrocketed from late 2021 onwards, reached a peak of **** percent in October 2022, and although down to more usual levels by 2024, is expected to rise in 2025, reaching around *** percent by the second half of the year.

Massenarbeitslosigkeit und soziales Elend prägten Anfang der dreißiger Jahre das Leben breiter Bevölkerungsschichten in den von der Weltwirtschaftskrise betroffenen Industriegesellschaften. Den zeitgenössischen Politikern und staatlichen Institutionen stellte sich die Lösung dieser Probleme als innenpolitische Hauptaufgabe. Dabei waren sie auf die Mitarbeit der großen wirtschaftlichen Interessenverbände der Arbeitgeber und der Arbeitnehmer angewiesen. Dies galt im europäischen Kontext auf Arbeitnehmerseite insbesondere für die deutsche und britische Gewerkschaftsbewegung, die die mit Abstand stärksten Organisationen im Internationalen Gewerkschaftsbund (IGB) stellten. Die deutschen und britischen Gewerkschaften entwickelten eine Vielzahl an Vorschlägen und Forderungen zur Beseitigung der Arbeitslosigkeit, die in der vorliegenden Studie vergleichend dargestellt werden. Dabei steht der jeweilige Dachverband – auf der einen Seite der Allgemeine Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund (ADGB), auf der anderen Seite der Trade Union Congress (TUC) – im Mittelpunkt der Betrachtung. Die vergleichende Analyse der gewerkschaftlichen Arbeitslosenpolitik fragt darüber hinaus nach dem jeweiligen Beitrag der beiden Organisationen zum Erhalt der politischen Stabilität in ihrem Land. Die vorliegende Untersuchung zur gewerkschaftlichen Arbeitslosenpolitik in der Weltwirtschaftskrise lässt sich in zwei größere, thematische Teilbereiche aufspalten. Der eine umfasst die politische und gesellschaftliche Entwicklung, die Frage nach Radikalisierungstendenzen in der Bevölkerung, den Machtverhältnissen in Staat und Gesellschaft, der Repräsentation gesellschaftlicher Interessen im politischen Bereich, der Veränderung der demokratischen Institutionen. Den zweiten Bereich bilden die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung, die wirtschaftspolitischen Handlungsspielräume von Staat und Gewerkschaften und insbesondere die Frage nach den Durchsetzungs- und Erfolgsmöglichkeiten einer alternativen Konjunkturpolitik.In dem ersten Abschnitt stellt Claudia Kaiser die Strukturen und die Entwicklung der Arbeitslosigkeit in ausgewählten Statistiken für das Deutschland und Großbritannien dar. Der zweite Abschnitt zeichnet zunächst ein Gesamtbild der ökonomischen Entwicklung und widmet sich daran anschließend der staatlichen Wirtschafts-, Finanz- und Sozialpolitik. Der dritte Abschnitt beschäftigt sich mit den organisatorischen Handlungsspielräumen des ADGB und des TUC in der Weltwirtschaftskrise. Hier werden insbesondere auch die Mitgliederentwicklung und der Organisationsgrad der gewerkschaftlichen Dachverbände berücksichtigt. In dem vierten Abschnitt werden die deutschen und britischen Arbeitsbeziehungen diskutiert. Die Auseinandersetzung der Gewerkschaften mit dem politischen Extremismus folgt im fünften Abschnitt. Der sechste Abschnitt umfasst die programmatischen Reaktionen auf die Weltwirtschaftskrise (Konjunkturpolitik und Planung). Themen Datentabellen in HISTAT (Thema: Erwerbstätigkeit): Tab. 1 Arbeitslosigkeit im Deutschen Reich und im Vereinigten Königreich (1921-1928)Tab. 2 Arbeitslosigkeit als Anteil an der gesamten Erwerbsbevölkerung: Deutsches Reich, Vereinigtes Königreich, USA (1920-1938)Tab. 3 Entwicklung der Bruttoanlageinvestitionen im Deutschen Reich und im Vereinigten Königreich (1925-1932)Tab. 4 Öffentliche Ausgaben im Vereinigten Königreich und im Deutschen Reich (1925-1939)Tab. 5 Bruttoanlageinvestitionen des privaten, öffentlichen und halböffentlichen Sektors zu konstanten Preisen von 1930 in Großbritannien (1920-1938)Tab. 6 Wohnwirtschaftliche Bruttoanlageinvestitionen des privaten, öffentlichen Sektors in Deutschland (1925-1934)Tab. 7 Mitgliederentwicklung, Organisationsgrad und Parteimitgliedschaft im Trade Union Congress (1918-1939)Tab. 8 Mitgliederentwicklung und Organisationsgrad in den Freien Gewerkschaften (1918-1932)

Approximately one quarter of the UK population have a migration background (first- or second-generation immigrants). Some ethnic minority groups are more likely to be in atypical or flexible employment than the White British majority. In particular during a time of health and economic crisis, such as the COVID–19 pandemic, those ethnic groups were expected to be economically more vulnerable than other groups. This study shows the increased vulnerability of some ethnic minority groups during COVID–19 by looking at their labour market outcomes compared to White British. Specifically, we ask whether it was their disproportionate presence in flexible employment or in shut-down occupations that made some ethnic minority groups vulnerable to adverse labour market outcomes during the COVID–19 recession? Using the COVID–19 recession in the UK as a case study, we employ weighted linear probability models with 2021 data from the Evidence for Equality National Survey (EVENS) to look at changes in economic indicators across ethnic groups and gender. We report heterogeneity in flexible employment rates within the non-White group and between the non-White and the White British group. By using a conditional decomposition method, we aim to show that those ethnic minority groups who were disproportionately on flexible contracts experienced worse economic effects than the White British group. The collection consists of the Stata Do-File which can be used to reproduce the study.

Between 1820 and 1957, over 4.5 million people emigrated from Great Britain to the United States. The period with the highest levels of migration came during the 1860s, 70s and 80s, with almost 110 thousand people migrating in 1888 alone. The period with the lowest levels of migration came in the 1930s and early 40s, as the Great Depression caused an economic crisis across the globe, hitting the US and Great Britain particularly hard. Economic recovery in the late 1930s caused the migration rate to increase again, before the Second World War brought the numbers back down in the first half of the 1940s.

In March 2025, 66 percent of households in Great Britain reported that their cost of living had increased in the previous month, compared with 45 percent in July 2024. Although the share of people reporting a cost of living increase has generally been falling since August 2022, when 91 percent of households reported an increase, the most recent figures indicate that the Cost of Living Crisis is still ongoing for many households in the UK. Crisis ligers even as inflation falls Although various factors have been driving the Cost of Living Crisis in Britain, high inflation has undoubtedly been one of the main factors. After several years of relatively low inflation, the CPI inflation rate shot up from 2021 onwards, hitting a high of 11.1 percent in October 2022. In the months since that peak, inflation has fallen to more usual levels, and was 2.5 percent in December 2024, slightly up from 1.7 percent in September. Since June 2023, wages have also started to grow at a faster rate than inflation, albeit after a long period where average wages were falling relative to overall price increases. Economy continues to be the main issue for voters Ahead of the last UK general election, the economy was consistently selected as the main issue for voters for several months. Although the Conservative Party was seen by voters as the best party for handling the economy before October 2022, this perception collapsed following the market's reaction to Liz Truss' mini-budget. Even after changing their leader from Truss to Rishi Sunak, the Conservatives continued to fall in the polls, and would go onto lose the election decisively. Since the election, the economy remains the most important issue in the UK, although it was only slightly ahead of immigration and health as of January 2025.

Pre and post crisis (UK based companies) from 1st to 3rd digits Benford’s Law on net annual income of companies in UK.

Consumer lending, excluding student loans, in the United Kingdom (UK) reached nearly 33.51 billion British pounds in March 2025. These figures have thus recovered from the stark decline suffered in April 2020. The value of new consumer credit granted also decreased during the economic crisis of 2007, although more gradually. The category consumer lending includes loans and advances to individuals through credit cards and personal loans. The majority of consumer credit is through credit card lending. Mortgage lending The value of outstanding mortgage lending in the UK is far higher than that of consumer credit. Additionally, the outstanding volume of consumer credit has fluctuated more in the past, while mortgages have had a more consistent growth. In the second quarter of 2024, the value of gross new mortgage lending in the UK amounted to over 60 billion British pounds. Credit card payments With billions of British pounds in gross consumer lending through credit cards, it’s unsurprising that the number of credit cards in circulation in 2022 was nearly as high as the number of people in the UK. The number of credit cards peaked in 2005, and it slightly decreased in the following months. However, there were still nearly 56 million credit cards in issue in the UK in 2023. The average amount spent per purchase on credit cards in the UK was roughly 59 British pounds in November 2024. This figure is much lower than the spending limit of most credit cards.

The economy was seen by 52 percent of people in the UK as one of the top three issues facing the country in May 2025. The ongoing cost of living crisis afflicting the UK, driven by high inflation, is still one of the main concerns of Britons. Immigration has generally been the second most important issue since the middle of 2024, just ahead of health, which was seen as the third-biggest issue in the most recent month. Labour's popularity continues to sink in 2025 Despite winning the 2024 general election with a strong majority, the new Labour government has had its share of struggles since coming to power. Shortly after taking office, the approval rating for Labour stood at -2 percent, but this fell throughout the second half of 2024, and by January 2025 had sunk to a new low of -47 percent. Although this was still higher than the previous government's last approval rating of -56 percent, it is nevertheless a severe review from the electorate. Among several decisions from the government, arguably the least popular was the government withdrawing winter fuel payments. This state benefit, previously paid to all pensioners, is now only paid to those on low incomes, with millions of pensioners not receiving this payment in winter 2024. Sunak's pledges fail to prevent defeat in 2024 With an election on the horizon, and the Labour Party consistently ahead in the polls, addressing voter concerns directly was one of the best chances the Conservatives had of staying in power in 2023. At the start of that year, Rishi Sunak attempted to do this by setting out his five pledges for the next twelve months; halve inflation, grow the economy, reduce national debt, cut NHS waiting times, and stop small boats. A year later, Sunak had at best only partial success in these aims. Although the inflation rate fell, economic growth was weak and even declined in the last two quarters of 2023, although it did return to growth in early 2024. National debt was only expected to fall in the mid to late 2020s, while the trend of increasing NHS waiting times did not reverse. Small boat crossings were down from 2022, but still higher than in 2021 or 2020. .