Economic growth and productivity

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measures the total output of goods and services produced by an economy.

In 2025, the UK's economy produced £2,940 billion of goods and services.

In the chart, you can see the change in the UK's GDP since 1700. This data is adjusted for inflation.

The economy produces around 200 times as much as in 1700, 12 times as much as in 1900, and six times as much as in 1948.

For most of the 1700s, the economy grew by less than 1% a year. Growth picked up with the Industrial Revolution, to around 2% a year from the 1820s.

The fastest growth came in the 1950s and 1960s, at more than 3% a year. Growth has been slower since.

Using the tab on the chart, you can see this data measured per person. GDP per person grew by 1.1% a year in the 2000s and 1.4% in the 2010s, and has barely grown in the 2020s so far.

If we look at annual growth data over the long-term, we see the impact of various recessions and economic shocks.

The economy shrank by 10% in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic: the largest fall in 300 years, according to the Bank of England's historical estimates. It grew by 8.5% the next year, as restrictions were lifted.

Before that, the deepest recession was in 2009, after the financial crisis, when GDP fell by 4.5%. Since 2023, growth has been between 0.4% and 1.2% a year.

GDP per person — the economy's output divided by the number of people — is a common measure of how prosperous a country is.

For centuries, it changed slowly. In 1700, GDP per person in England was around £2,200 in today's prices, twice as much as in 1270.

Since then, it has risen almost twentyfold, to £42,300 in 2025. Almost 90% of that rise came in the last 100 years.

Between 1955 and 2007, GDP per person grew by an average of 2.3% a year. Since the financial crisis, it has grown much more slowly: by 9% in total between 2007 and 2025, or 0.5% a year.

If it had kept growing at its earlier rate, GDP per person would have been around £58,000 in 2025. Instead, it was £42,300, 27% lower.

The typical (median) full-time employee earned £811 a week in April 2026, before tax.

Adjusted for inflation, median pay fell by 7% between 2008 and 2014, after the financial crisis, and fell again when inflation rose in 2022 and 2023. It only rose above its 2008 level in 2026.

After the Black Death killed between a third and a half of England's population in the late 1340s, workers were scarce, and real wages roughly doubled. By 1600 they had fallen back to their earlier level.

They only started to rise steadily in the 1800s. Adjusted for inflation, average wages today are around 18 times what they were in 1800, and seven times what they were in 1900.

Productivity — how much is produced for each hour worked — is what allows wages and living standards to rise over the long run.

Output per hour grew by 2.2% a year between 1971 and 2007. Between 2007 and 2019, it grew by around 1% a year. This slowdown has become known as the 'productivity puzzle'.

The chart uses ONS's new measure of productivity from 1997, which it published in September 2026. On ONS's previous measure, the slowdown looked even worse: growth of just 0.5% a year between 2007 and 2019.

In September 2026, the ONS adjusted its measure of productivity to better capture the number of hours people work. This will be used in its headline productivity figures from November 2026.

The previous measure took hours from the Labour Force Survey, which asks people how many hours they worked. The ONS found that this has overstated hours (because annual leave was under-recorded), and increasingly so since 2008. The new measure uses employers' payroll records instead.

On the new measure, productivity has grown faster since the financial crisis: by 1.3% a year between 2009 and 2019, rather than 0.7%. The slowdown is around half as large as was thought. But it hasn't gone away: productivity in 2024 was still 10% below where its pre-2008 trend would have taken it.

Adjusted for differences in prices, GDP per person in the UK was around $54,000 in 2025. That's similar to France and Italy, but lower than in Germany ($62,800) and the United States ($76,900). The UK ranked 15th of the 23 rich countries in the chart.

Using the tab on the chart, you can see the change in each country since 2007. Since 2007, the UK's GDP per person has grown by 8%: less than in Germany (14%), France (10%) and the United States (26%).

For much of the 1800s, the UK was the richest large country in the world per person. The United States overtook it at the end of the century, and by 1950 the UK had been overtaken by several more countries, including Australia, Canada and Switzerland.

How does the UK's productivity compare to other countries?

In 2023, the UK produced around $68 of output for each hour worked. That's similar to Italy, but around 18% less than the United States and Germany, and 12% less than France.

GDP comes from ONS's national accounts (consistent with Blue Book 2026), from 1948, and GDP per person from 1955. Earlier figures come from the Bank of England's A millennium of macroeconomic data for the UK, which brings together historical estimates by economic historians. They are scaled to meet ONS's figures, so the long-run series grows as the historical estimates do. Estimates for earlier centuries are much less certain than modern ones.

Median pay comes from ONS's Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), which surveys employers about a sample of jobs each April. Average wages over the long run come from the Bank of England's index of real wages, extended after 2016 with ONS's average weekly earnings.

Productivity is output per hour worked. From 1997, the long-run series uses ONS's new measure, which takes hours from employers' payroll records. From 1971 to 1996, it uses ONS's previous measure, with hours from the Labour Force Survey; earlier figures come from the Bank of England. The comparison of ONS's previous and new measures uses ONS's research article of September 2026, which covers 1997 to 2024.

International comparisons come from the World Bank (GDP per person since 1990), the Maddison Project Database (GDP per person since 1820), and the Penn World Table (productivity), via Our World in Data. They adjust for differences in prices between countries (purchasing power parity), so their figures differ from ONS's.

Figures adjusted for inflation use the GDP deflator for GDP and productivity, and consumer prices (CPIH or CPI) for wages.