It’s not often that we see a GDP revision as startling as the one published today. In its Blue Book for 2023 – which includes updated methods for a range of calculations – the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has upgraded the size of the economy in the final quarter of 2021 by 1.7 per cent. This means that by the time the Omicron variant hit, the UK economy was actually 0.6 per cent above its pre-Covid level – not 1.2 per cent below, as previously stated.
This is a staggering difference. It was thought as recently as this summer that GDP still had not returned to its pre-pandemic levels. Today we learn this milestone was actually passed almost two years ago.
This changes the international picture completely. The UK has been labelled an outlier for years now, compared to the other advanced economies, seemingly struggling to make the Covid recovery.
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