By
Bilal Hafeez
23-01-2020
4 Macro Things You Didn’t Know About The UK
(3 min read)
While most are focused on UK data in the short-term to gauge whether the Bank of England will cut rates next week, we shouldn’t lose sight of some larger trends affecting the country. Here are four to keep an eye on:
1) UK Productivity is Weak, Weak, Weak
We all know UK productivity is weak. But few of us appreciate how bad the picture is. Looking back over the past century or two, we can see that UK productivity growth has returned to where it was in the late 1800s (if we exclude the two world wars, Chart 1). This chronic weakness (observable since the financial crisis) is something Andy Haldane, Chief Economist of the Bank of England, considers to be much worse than even what is expected in hard Brexit scenarios.
1) UK Productivity is Weak, Weak, Weak
We all know UK productivity is weak. But few of us appreciate how bad the picture is. Looking back over the past century or two, we can see that UK productivity growth has returned to where it was in the late 1800s (if we exclude the two world wars, Chart 1). This chronic weakness (observable since the financial crisis) is something Andy Haldane, Chief Economist of the Bank of England, considers to be much worse than even what is expected in hard Brexit scenarios.
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