The UK has been transformed from the laggard of developed economy COVID recoveries, after a recent data revision by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed its growth was stronger than previously thought after the pandemic-era lockdowns. The country’s gross domestic product (GDP), a measure of national income that was previously reported as staying below its pre-pandemic level, is now shown to have risen above that point by the fourth quarter of 2021.
A story of how COVID infections and post-Brexit disruptions made the UK the slowest-recovering industrial economy has suddenly switched to one in which, by the end of 2021, it was growing at a similar pace to France and ahead of Germany – although still behind others such as the US. The same GDP revision has made little difference to earlier years, from 1997 to 2019, so the UK economy wasn’t bigger all along. It’s specifically the pandemic years that saw a smaller downturn and stronger re-expansion than previously believed. Why, then, are the effects of a cost of living crisis still being so widely felt?
