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UK ECONOMY "CRAWLS" OUT OF RECESSION

I am not too sure if anyone else perceived the irony of the Labour Party organising a £1000 a head fundraising dinner on the day that Save the Children was announced that Wales has the highest levels of child poverty of any UK nation.

Unfortunately, these stories will be lost quickly as they broke on the day that it was announced that the UK economy has just about ‘crawled’ out of the longest recession since the 1920s.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the UK economy grew by only 0.1 per cent between October and December, well below the 0.4 per cent growth forecasted by the great and the good in the City of London.

This, of course, does not take away from the fact that the economy shrank by more than 4.8 per cent in 2009, the fastest annual decline for 88 years, and more than any other 12-month period since the 1930s Depression. In fact, this 2009 final quarter figure could be revised downwards (or upwards) by the ONS as it is estimate based on only 40 per cent of the data analysed.

However, the worse aspect of this miniscule growth is that we could easily see the economy shrink again in the first quarter of 2010, especially given the fragile state of retailing after Christmas and the withdrawal of government stimuli such as the VAT reduction and the ending of the car scrappage scheme

Of course, unlike the BBC headline which stated that "Wales is out of recession", that may not be the case at all as it may be the other regions of the UK which have helped to push the 0.1 per cent growth in the overall UK economy.

Given the state of manufacturing in Wales and the higher level of unemployment than other UK nations, the Welsh economy may still be shrinking although thanks to the fact that we do not have separate GDP estimates for wales, we will probaly never know the answer.

Comments

Insider said…
....and what about the snow.

Nothing productive happened for two weeks across vast swathes of the UK.
January 26, 2010 1:22 pm
Anonymous said…
But these are only stats
Jobs are still in danger , people are still out of work
Small business is scared of investing
There are few new jobs and the number of schemes out there increases even more
Oh and child poverty is deplorable and no end insight
January 26, 2010 5:49 pm
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