At the end of last year, there was good news on the UK economy, which saw a reasonable pick-up in the final quarter. But what happened in January? Did the good news continue? Brace yourself for some shocking news.
The story of 2017.
In 2016, the story of growth in GDP was as follows
| Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | |
| Euro area | 0.6 | 0.6 | 0.7 | 0.6 |
| US | 0.3 | 0.8 | 0.8 | (2.6 annualized, around 0.65 per cent.) |
| UK | 0.3 | 0.3 | 0.4 | 0.5 |
The UK was clearly in bottom place, but at least it closed the gap at the year’s end.
Now we have the purchasing managers indexes for January.
They look this like this: that’s
| Manufacturing | Construction | Services (Non-manufacturing in the US) | Composite | Suggest economic growth of? | |
| Euro area, |
Source Markit59.657.658.8 (output growing at fastest rate in 12 years)1 per cent (quarter on quarter)UK
Source
Markit/CIPS55.350.2530.3 per cent quarter on quarter)US
Source ISM59.159.9 (highest level since 2005)Four per cent annualisedAnd this is the result:
