The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has just confirmed that the economy ‘grew’ by 0.1 per cent in the last three months of 2024. Its final estimate for the last quarter of last year confirms that Britain’s economy continues to float just above recession territory. The very modest growth in the final quarter was driven by the services sector, also 0.1 per cent, which outweighed a 0.3 per cent contraction in construction. On a per-head basis, GDP fell by 0.1 per cent.
Each quarter from October 2023 to June last year had GDP growth revised upwards by 0.1 percentage points, with the ONS’s Chief Economist, Grant Fitzner, saying: ‘Today’s updated GDP estimates indicate that the economy grew slightly more strongly in the first half of the year’. However, the good news stopped there. Fitzner pointed out that the economy has continued to show little growth since last summer.
So, the economy was growing faster than statisticians had previously estimated in the first half of last year before coming to a halt in the summer.
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