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 economy of the United Kingdom shrank by 0.3 percent in April 2025, after growing by 0.2 percent in March 2025. As of the most recent month, the UK economy is around 4.2 percent larger than it was in February 2020, just before the start of COVID-19 lockdowns. After a record 19.6 percent decline in GDP in April 2020, the UK economy quickly returned to growth in the following months, and grew through most of 2021. Cost of living crisis lingers into 2025 As of December 2024, just over half of people in the UK reported that their cost of living was higher than it was in the previous month. Although this is a decline from the peak of the crisis in 2022 when over 90 percent of people reported a higher cost of living, households are evidently still under severe pressure. While wage growth has outpaced inflation since July 2023, overall consumer prices were 20 percent higher in late 2024 than they were in late 2021. For food and energy, which lower income households spend more on, late 2024 prices were almost 30 percent higher when compared with late 2021. According to recent estimates, living standards, as measured by changes in disposable income fell by 2.1 percent in 2022/23, but did start to grow again in 2023/24. Late 2023 recession followed by growth in 2024 In December 2023, the UK economy was approximately the same size as it was a year earlier, and struggled to achieve modest growth throughout that year. Going into 2023, a surge in energy costs, as well as high interest rates, created an unfavorable environment for UK consumers and businesses. The inflationary pressures that drove these problems did start to subside, however, with inflation falling to 3.9 percent in November 2023, down from a peak of 11.1 percent in October 2022. Although relatively strong economic growth occurred in the first half of 2024, with GDP growing by 0.7 percent, and 0.4 percent in the first two quarters of the year, zero growth was reported in the third quarter of the year. Long-term issues, such as low business investment, weak productivity growth, and regional inequality, will likely continue to hamper the economy going forward.

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.

In 2024, the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United Kingdom grew by *** percent and is expected to grow by just *** percent in 2025 and by *** percent in 2026. Growth is expected to slow down to *** percent in 2027, and then grow by ***, and *** percent in 2027 and 2028 respectively. The sudden emergence of COVID-19 in 2020 and subsequent closure of large parts of the economy were the cause of the huge *** percent contraction in 2020, with the economy recovering somewhat in 2021, when the economy grew by *** percent. UK growth downgraded in 2025 Although the economy is still expected to grow in 2025, the *** percent growth anticipated in this forecast has been halved from *** percent in October 2024. Increased geopolitical uncertainty as well as the impact of American tariffs on the global economy are some of the main reasons for this mark down. The UK's inflation rate for 2025 has also been revised, with an annual rate of *** percent predicated, up from *** percent in the last forecast. Unemployment is also anticipated to be higher than initially thought, with the annual unemployment rate likely to be *** percent instead of *** percent. Long-term growth problems In the last two quarters of 2023, the UK economy shrank by *** percent in Q3 and by *** percent in Q4, plunging the UK into recession for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. Even before that last recession, however, the UK economy has been struggling with weak growth. Although growth since the pandemic has been noticeably sluggish, there has been a clear long-term trend of declining growth rates. The economy has consistently been seen as one of the most important issues to people in Britain, ahead of health, immigration and the environment. Achieving strong levels of economic growth is one of the main aims of the Labour government elected in 2024, although after almost one year in power it has so far proven elusive.

The UK economy grew by 0.7 percent in the first quarter of 2025, compared with 0.1 percent growth in the previous quarter. After ending 2023 in recession, the UK economy grew strongly in the first half of 2024, growing by 0.8 percent in Q1, and 0.4 percent in Q2, with growth slowing in the second half of the year. In the third quarter of 2020 the UK experienced record setting growth of 16.8 percent, which itself followed the record 20.3 percent contraction in Q2 2020. Growing economy key to Labour's plans Since winning the 2024 general election, the UK's Labour Party have seen their popularity fall substantially. In February 2025, the government's approval rating fell to a low of -54 percent, making them almost as disliked as the Conservatives just before the last election. A string of unpopular policies since taking office have taken a heavy toll on support for the government. Labour hope they can reverse their declining popularity by growing the economy, which has underperformed for several years, and when measured in GDP per capita, fell in 2023, and 2024. Steady labor market trends set to continue? After a robust 2022, the UK labor market remained resilient throughout 2023 and 2024. The unemployment rate at the end of 2024 was 4.4 percent, up from four percent at the start of the year, but still one of the lowest rates on record. While the average number of job vacancies has been falling since a May 2022 peak, there was a slight increase in January 2025 when compared with the previous month. The more concerning aspect of the labor market, from the government's perspective, are the high levels of economic inactivity due to long-term sickness, which reached a peak of 2.84 million in late 2023, and remained at high levels throughout 2024.

Article on the labour market across the UK in the current recession

Source agency: Office for National Statistics

Designation: National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: The labour market across the UK in the current recession

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.  

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.

United States Recession Probability data was reported at 14.120 % in Oct 2019. This records a decrease from the previous number of 14.505 % for Sep 2019. United States Recession Probability data is updated monthly, averaging 7.668 % from Jan 1960 (Median) to Oct 2019, with 718 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 95.405 % in Dec 1981 and a record low of 0.080 % in Sep 1983. United States Recession Probability data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United States – Table US.S021: Recession Probability.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the United Kingdom expanded 0.70 percent in the first quarter of 2025 over the previous quarter. This dataset provides the latest reported value for - United Kingdom GDP Growth Rate - plus previous releases, historical high and low, short-term forecast and long-term prediction, economic calendar, survey consensus and news.

Extensive research has been conducted on the concept of jobless recoveries and their potential causes, primarily focused on the United States from the 1990s. This paper finds that the prolonged employment downturn following the brief 1980-1981 recession in Britain qualifies as a jobless recovery and then investigates possible contributing factors: labor reallocation across industries, regional employment changes, and job polarization. The United States, which did not have a jobless recovery from the early 1980s recession, is taken as a comparison case. I find that the leading candidate explanation for this jobless recovery was the reallocation of labor across industries. This suggests an important role for structural change in the early 1980s recession and in jobless recoveries more generally.

United States NBER: Recorded Recession data was reported at 0.000 Unit in Oct 2018. This stayed constant from the previous number of 0.000 Unit for Sep 2018. United States NBER: Recorded Recession data is updated monthly, averaging 0.000 Unit from Jan 1959 (Median) to Oct 2018, with 718 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 1.000 Unit in Jun 2009 and a record low of 0.000 Unit in Oct 2018. United States NBER: Recorded Recession data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United States – Table US.S021: Recession Probability. An interpretation of US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions data provided by The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). A value of 1 is a recessionary period, while a value of 0 is an expansionary period.

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'.

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.

Analysis of household disposable income and the saving ratio.

Source agency: Office for National Statistics

Designation: Supporting material

Language: English

Alternative title: Household income and saving ratio

United States NBER-Based Recession Indicators from the Peak Through the Trough data was reported at 0.000 Unit in 14 May 2025. This stayed constant from the previous number of 0.000 Unit for 13 May 2025. United States NBER-Based Recession Indicators from the Peak Through the Trough data is updated daily, averaging 0.000 Unit from Dec 1854 (Median) to 14 May 2025, with 62256 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 1.000 Unit in 15 Apr 2020 and a record low of 0.000 Unit in 14 May 2025. United States NBER-Based Recession Indicators from the Peak Through the Trough data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United States – Table US.S: NBER-Based Recession Indicators.

This statistic shows the public perception of the economic situation in the United Kingdom (UK) as of May 2017. Respondents were asked how they would judge the current situation, 42 percent of the 1,365 respondents replying with 'rather bad' or 'very bad.' Whereas the perception of the economy in Sweden showed that 19 percent of respondents regarded the economy in a negative condition. Perceptions of the economy in the Netherlands reveal that 17 percent of respondents made the same assessment. The outlook in the UK regarding the economy negatively was over twice as common as both countries. Although, British opinion on household financial situation was one of optimism, with 80 percent of respondents stating that the current financial situation of their household was positive.

Article on the impact of the recession on the labour market

Source agency: Office for National Statistics

Designation: National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: Labour Market and Recession

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.