Regions and Countries of the UK Recovering from the Economic Downturn

9th July 2014

Latest regional and country economic indicators show that the economy across the UK has been improving. Nominal output grew in every region and country between 2009 and 2012 (the latest data available) and this led to the level of nominal output in 2012 surpassing the pre-downturn level in all regions and countries except Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, employment rates have been on a rising trend in all regions and countries since early 2012 such that employment rates in Feb-Apr 2014 had returned to similar levels to those in Feb-Apr 2007 across most of the regions/countries of the UK.

In terms of regional or country differences, the data show that London has outperformed the rest of the UK during both the period of the recovery and even more so when considering the period through both the economic downturn and recovery. London's nominal Gross Value Added (GVA) rose by 15.4% over the period 2007 to 2012 compared with 6.9% for the rest of the UK. Meanwhile, London's employment rate improved by 3.5 percentage points over the period, from Feb–Apr 2007 to Feb–Apr 2014, in contrast to the rest of the UK, where the employment rate was virtually unchanged (down by 0.1 percentage points).

Output
Figure 1 shows that nominal GVA grew in all regions/countries from 2009 to 2012. London and the South East experienced the largest percentage increases in GVA over this period, followed by the East Midlands and West Midlands. The lowest growth occurred in Northern Ireland. Over the longer 2007 to 2012 period, nominal growth was very similar (in the range of 5.4% to 7.0%) across most of the regions and countries. The exceptions were London and the South East (15.4% and 11.3% growth respectively), and Yorkshire and The Humber (2.6% growth) and Northern Ireland (1.0% contraction). It should be noted that these data are in nominal terms so have not been adjusted for inflation.