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International - August 13, 2020

UK Economy Q2, Unemployment Fears Mount

Britain’s economy shrank a record 20.4 percent between April and June, when the coronavirus lockdown was tightest, the largest contraction reported any major economy so far, with a wave of job losses set to hit later in 2020, official figures showed on Wednesday.

There were signs of a recovery in June when output grew 8.7 percent from May, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, just above economists’ average expectation in a Reuters poll for an 8-percent rise.

The scale of the hit to the gross domestic product may revive questions about Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Britain has suffered Europe’s highest death toll, with more than 50,000 deaths linked to the disease between March 1 and June 30, according to the ONS.

“The recession brought on the coronavirus pandemic has led to the biggest fall in quarterly GDP on record,” said Jonathan Athow of the Office for National Statistics.

“The economy began to bounce back in June… Despite this, GDP in June still remains a sixth below its level in February, before the virus struck.”

The second-quarter slump in GDP was almost exactly in line with economists’ average forecast in a Reuters poll and exceeded the 12.1-percent drop in the Eurozone and the 9.5 percent quarter-on-quarter fall in the United States.

“Today’s figures confirm that hard times are here,” Finance Minister Rishi Sunak said. “Hundreds of thousands of people have already lost their jobs, and sadly in the coming months, many more will.”

The level of output in June was 16.8 percent below its level a year earlier, compared with a 23.3-percent fall for May.

Suren Thiru, an economist with the British Chambers of Commerce, said the pick-up toward the end of the quarter probably only reflected the release of pent-up demand rather than the start of a sustained revival.

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