Recession hit the British economy in the last quarter of 2023, according to official data that was made public on Thursday.
As reported by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the GDP shrank by 0.3% in the fourth quarter after declining by 0.1% in the preceding quarter. The conventional definition of a technical recession is two consecutive quarters of declining production.
According to the ONS, the economy’s three primary sectors—production, services, and construction—all saw decreases in the fourth quarter.
Including the pandemic year of 2020, the economy is projected to have grown by 0.1% for the entire year of 2023, which the ONS referred to as “the weakest annual change in real GDP since the financial crisis in 2009”. The growth rate was 4.3% in 2022.
Some economists also partially attribute the weak economic performance to the effects of Brexit.
The data released on Thursday represents a preliminary estimate and is subject to revision, the ONS noted.
