Annual estimates of balanced UK regional gross domestic product (GDP). Current price estimates and chained volume measures for UK countries, ITL1, ITL2 and ITL3 regions.

In 2023, London had a gross domestic product of over 569 billion British pounds, by far the most of any region of the United Kingdom. The region of South East England which surrounds London had the second-highest GDP in this year, at over 360 billion pounds. North West England, which includes the major cities of Manchester and Liverpool, had the third-largest GDP among UK regions, at almost 250 billion pounds. Levelling Up the UK London’s economic dominance of the UK can clearly be seen when compared to the other regions of the country. In terms of GDP per capita, the gap between London and the rest of the country is striking, standing at over 63,600 pounds per person in the UK capital, compared with just over 37,100 pounds in the rest of the country. To address the economic imbalance, successive UK governments have tried to implement "levelling-up policies", which aim to boost investment and productivity in neglected areas of the country. The success of these programs going forward may depend on their scale, as it will likely take high levels of investment to reverse economic neglect regions have faced in the recent past. Overall UK GDP The gross domestic product for the whole of the United Kingdom amounted to 2.56 trillion British pounds in 2024. During this year, GDP grew by 0.9 percent, following a growth rate of 0.4 percent in 2023. Due to the overall population of the UK growing faster than the economy, however, GDP per capita in the UK fell in both 2023 and 2024. Nevertheless, the UK remains one of the world’s biggest economies, with just five countries (the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and India) having larger economies. It is it likely that several other countries will overtake the UK economy in the coming years, with Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, and Mexico all expected to have larger economies than Britain by 2050.

Annual estimates of balanced UK regional gross domestic product (GDP). Current price estimates, chained volume measures and implied deflators for combined authorities, city regions, and other economic and enterprise regions.

In 2023, the gross domestic product per capita in London was 63,618 British pounds, compared with 37,135 pounds per capita for the United Kingdom as a whole. Apart from London, the only other region of the UK that had a greater GDP per capita than the UK average was South East England, at 38,004 pounds per capita. By contrast, North East England had the lowest GDP per capita among UK regions, at 26,347 pounds. Regional imbalance in the UK economy? London's overall GDP in 2022 was over 508 billion British pounds, which accounted for almost a quarter of the overall GDP of the United Kingdom. South East England had the second-largest regional economy in the country, with a GDP of almost 341.7 billion British pounds. Furthermore, these two regions were the only ones that had higher levels of productivity (as measured by output per hour worked) than the UK average. While recent governments have recognized regional inequality as a major challenge facing the country, it may take several years for any initiatives to bear fruit. The creation of regional metro mayors across England is one of the earliest attempts at giving regions and cities in particular more power over spending in their regions than they currently have. UK economy growth slow in late 2024 After ending 2023 with two quarters of negative growth, the UK economy grew at the reasonable rate of 0.8 percent and 0.4 percent in the first and second quarters of the year. This was, however, followed by zero growth in the third quarter, and by just 0.1 percent in the last quarter of the year. Other economic indicators, such as the inflation rate, fell within the expected range in 2024, but have started to rise again, with a rate of three percent recorded in January 2025. While unemployment has witnessed a slight uptick since 2022, it is still at quite low levels compared with previous years.

Quarterly economic activity within England, Wales and the nine English regions (North East, North West, Yorkshire and The Humber, East Midlands, West Midlands, East of England, London, South East, South West).

In 2023, the UK economy grew by 0.3 percent, with Northern Ireland the fastest-growing part of the UK in that year, at 0.8 percent.

In 2023, Inner London - West was the local region of the United Kingdom that had the highest value of gross domestic product, at approximately, 263.6 billion British pounds, with Inner London - East having the second-highest amount at 139.8 billion pounds.

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 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.

This dataset comprises historical GDP and population data for regional entities in Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Entities included:
-For Belgium: Brussels, Flanders, Wallonia.
-For Spain: Andalusia, Aragon, Asturias, Balearic Islands, Basque Country, Canary Islands, Cantabria, Castile-la Mancha, Castile-Leon, Catalonia, Extremadura, Galicia, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia, Navarre, Valencia.
-For the United Kingdom: England, London, Northern Ireland [since 1801], (Southern) Ireland [1801-1921], Scotland, Wales.

Periods covered for GDP data:
-For Belgium: 1846-2005.
-For Spain: 1860-2015.
-For the United Kingdom: 1707-2017.

Periods covered for population data:
-For Belgium: 1841-2017.
-For Spain: 1860-2015.
-For the United Kingdom: 1801-2017.

Sources, acknowledgement and citation:
The data have been compiled and/or calculated by the author based on different sources listed in the 'About'-section of the data sheet. When using the data, please cite the appropriate sources related to the part of the data you use, as well as the present dataset as referenced above.

Latest version: 1.0 [24.05.2022].

505 Economics is on a mission to make academic economics accessible. We've developed the first monthly sub-national GDP data for EU and UK regions from January 2015 onwards.

Our GDP dataset uses luminosity as a proxy for GDP. The brighter a place, the more economic activity that place tends to have.

We produce the data using high-resolution night time satellite imagery and Artificial Intelligence.

This builds on our academic research at the London School of Economics, and we're producing the dataset in collaboration with the European Space Agency BIC UK.

We have published peer-reviewed academic articles on the usage of luminosity as an accurate proxy for GDP.

Key features:

• Granular: Data is provided at the following geographical units:
  • NUTS3 (e.g. London Boroughs),
  • NUTS2 (e.g. London),
  • NUTS1 (e.g. England), and
  • NUTS0 (e.g. United Kingdom) levels.
• Frequent: Data is provided every month from January 2015. This is more frequent than the annualised official datasets.
• Timely: Data is provided with a one month lag (i.e. the data for January 2021 was published at the end of February 2021). This is substantially quicker than the 18 month lag of official datasets.
• Accurate: Our dataset uses Deep Learning to maximise accuracy (RMSE 1.2%).

The dataset can be used by:

• Governments and policy makers - to monitor the performance of local economies, to measure the localised impact of policies, and to get a real-time indication of economic activity.
• Financial services - to get an indication of national-level GDP before official GDP statistics are released
• Engineering companies - to monitor and evaluate the localised impact of infrastructure projects
• Consultancies - to forecast the localised impact of specific projects, to retrospectively monitor and evaluate the localised impact of existing projects
• Economics firms - to create macro forecasts at the national and sub-national level, to assess the impact of policy interventions.
• Academia / Think Tanks - to conduct novel research at the local level. E.g. our dataset can be used to measure the impact of localised COVID-19 lockdowns.

We have created this dataset for all UK sub-national regions, 28 EU Countries and Switzerland.

In 2018 Turkey had the largest disparity between it's richest and poorest small regions in Europe, in terms of GDP per capita. The richest small regions in Turkey are estimated to have 3.5 times the GDP per capita of poor regions, with Hungary and the United Kingdom also displaying significant regional disparities.

A-T: Total, Annual index, Chained volume measure, East of England. Annual economic activity within England, Wales and the nine English regions (North East, North West, Yorkshire and the Humber, East Midlands, West Midlands, East of England, Greater London, South East, South West).

505 Economics is on a mission to make academic economics accessible. We've developed the first monthly sub-national GDP data for EU and UK regions from January 2015 onwards.

Our GDP dataset uses luminosity as a proxy for GDP. The brighter a place, the more economic activity that place tends to have.

We produce the data using high-resolution night time satellite imagery and Artificial Intelligence.

This builds on our academic research at the London School of Economics, and we're producing the dataset in collaboration with the European Space Agency BIC UK.

We have published peer-reviewed academic articles on the usage of luminosity as an accurate proxy for GDP.

Key features:

• Granular: Data is provided at the following geographical units:
  • NUTS3 (e.g. Provinces),
  • NUTS2 (e.g. Regions),
  • NUTS1 (e.g. Macroregions), and
  • NUTS0 (e.g. Italy) levels.
• Frequent: Data is provided every month from January 2015. This is more frequent than the annualised official datasets.
• Timely: Data is provided with a one month lag (i.e. the data for January 2021 was published at the end of February 2021). This is substantially quicker than the 18 month lag of official datasets.
• Accurate: Our dataset uses Deep Learning to maximise accuracy (RMSE 1.2%).

The dataset can be used by:

• Governments and policy makers - to monitor the performance of local economies, to measure the localised impact of policies, and to get a real-time indication of economic activity.
• Financial services - to get an indication of national-level GDP before official GDP statistics are released
• Engineering companies - to monitor and evaluate the localised impact of infrastructure projects
• Consultancies - to forecast the localised impact of specific projects, to retrospectively monitor and evaluate the localised impact of existing projects
• Economics firms - to create macro forecasts at the national and sub-national level, to assess the impact of policy interventions.
• Academia / Think Tanks - to conduct novel research at the local level. E.g. our dataset can be used to measure the impact of localised COVID-19 lockdowns.

We have created this dataset for all UK sub-national regions, 28 EU Countries and Switzerland.

N: Administrative and support service activities, Annual index, Chained volume measure, East of England. Annual economic activity within England, Wales and the nine English regions (North East, North West, Yorkshire and the Humber, East Midlands, West Midlands, East of England, Greater London, South East, South West).

O: Public administration and defence; compulsory social security, Annual growth rate, Chained volume measure, North West. Annual economic activity within England, Wales and the nine English regions (North East, North West, Yorkshire and the Humber, East Midlands, West Midlands, East of England, Greater London, South East, South West).

A breakdown of all the data sources that feed into the output measure of regional gross domestic product (GDP).

United Kingdom UK: Forest Rents: % of GDP data was reported at 0.005 % in 2016. This records an increase from the previous number of 0.005 % for 2015. United Kingdom UK: Forest Rents: % of GDP data is updated yearly, averaging 0.008 % from Dec 1970 (Median) to 2016, with 47 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 0.019 % in 1976 and a record low of 0.004 % in 2005. United Kingdom UK: Forest Rents: % of GDP data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United Kingdom – Table UK.World Bank.WDI: Land Use, Protected Areas and National Wealth. Forest rents are roundwood harvest times the product of regional prices and a regional rental rate.; ; World Bank staff estimates based on sources and methods described in 'The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018: Building a Sustainable Future' (Lange et al 2018).; Weighted average;