The UK had a relatively disappointing year in 2019 in terms of its economic growth. However, inflation remained stable and close to the target rate of 2% per annum, while the rate of unemployment has continued to fall gradually.
Table 1 gives some recent data for the UK economy. This shows that real gross domestic product (GDP) growth has been well below the long-run average rate of 2.4%. In 2018 the growth rate was 1% below this rate and there is no evidence of a significant upturn in 2019. What is surprising is that unemployment has continued to fall even given the sluggish performance of real output. Normally, we would expect slow growth to result in a rise in unemployment. However, we have seen unemployment fall from over 5% in 2015 to less than 4% in 2019.
Your organisation does not have access to this article.
Sign up today to give your students the edge they need to achieve their best grades with subject expertise
Subscribe
