Productivity, monthly GDP and its output components

This week won’t be “data-shy”, indeed on Wednesday we will have the second q3 release for productivity.

In 2018 we talked a lot about productivity and its implication for our long-term prosperity (here you can find some examples).

The flash release for q3 already told us that, despite the very good GDP growth at 0.6% in the quarter, productivity contracted by 0.4%. This second release will tell us more about productivity in the different sectors and in particular in manufacturing which saw productivity decreasing by 0.1% in the second quarter of 2018.

On Friday, we will take a look to some new and very important data: it’s time for November monthly GDP and its components.

After the strong expansion in July (+0.3% in the month), monthly GDP reported three months of very feeble growth with rates of growth between 0% and 0.1%. Looking at PMI data, we might not see anything much better.

Manufacturing should recover some lost ground after the contraction of -0.9% in October and construction should also show the positive sign.

On the other hand, the PMI figure for the service sector - which accounts for 80% of the UK economy - had a very bad downturn in November moving close to the 50 mark (50.4) and despite good retail sales pushed up by “Black Friday”, it should not be able to perform strongly.

On Friday, we will see what all this will mean for the performance of the UK economy in November.

Stay tuned!