Fact check: The UK avoided recession in the last two quarters of 2024
Incorrect growth figures, and an incorrect claim that the UK is in a recession, were shared in an online post.
An MP listed a series of economic statistics in a social media post, followed by the phrase “in other words it’s a ‘recession'”.
The post read: “Buyers Remorse Anyone? UK growth 1.1% in first half of 2024, 0.1% second half. Since the election inflation up, unemployment up, growth snuffed out by big tax rises on jobs and business. In other words it’s a ‘recession’.”
Evaluation
By the most common definition, the UK is not currently in a recession. Some of the statistics listed in the post are not fully up to date.
The facts
There is no official definition of what comprises a recession, making the idea of a recession a little hard to quantify.
In the UK a recession is commonly held to be two consecutive quarters where gross domestic product (GDP) shrinks. This is a definition which is thought to date back to a 1974 article by a senior US statistician in the New York Times.
The social media post was made on the morning of February 13, a short while after the latest quarterly Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimate had been published by the Office for National Statistics.
This data showed that GDP rose in the second quarter of 2024, fell slightly in the third quarter, and rose again slightly in the fourth quarter. Therefore, by the definition of two consecutive quarters of falling GDP, the UK is not in a recession.
The data published on February 13 also showed that growth was 0.8% in the first quarter of 2024, which was revised up from a previous estimate of 0.7%. Growth in the second quarter of 2024 was kept unchanged at 0.4%. Added together these would reach 1.2%, and before the revision 1.1%.
However measuring GDP rise is not as simple as adding together two very rounded figures. By looking at more granular data it shows that GDP rose from £632,365 million in the final quarter of 2023 to £637,729 million in the first quarter of 2024, an increase of 0.848%. Between the first and second quarters it rose further to £640,592 million, a rise of 0.449%.
This means that for the first half of the year GDP rose by 1.301% from £632,365 million to £640,592 million, not the 1.1% that the social media post claimed.
To find this more granular data, look at the spreadsheet titled “Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2024, first estimate edition of this dataset” which is published by the ONS here. Go to the sheet titled C2 EXPENDITURE and look at column P, rows 366-370.
The claim about a 0.1% rise in the second half of the year is accurate.
The inflation rate increased from 2.2% in July, the month the election was held, to 2.5% in December.
Unemployment rose from 4.2% in the three months to July to 4.4% in the three months to November.
