London is the engine of the UK economy. But according to a new report, all is not well. The Centre for Cities think tank finds that the capital’s productivity growth has plummeted in comparison with international rivals, and that this has cost the national economy tens of billions of pounds a year.
The growth in London’s productivity (output per hour of work) was a soporific 0.2 per cent per year between 2007 and 2019. That represents a fall of nearly 3 percentage points compared with the previous decade, and lags behind international competitors such as New York, Paris and Stockholm which enjoyed annual growth of 1.4 per cent, 0.9 per cent and 0.7 per cent respectively.
