Forecast Overview

Abstract

The monthly GDP release for April reported a 20.4% month‐on‐month decline in output. With the ONS indicating that the next release will see the March fall revised to 6.9% from 5.9%, this suggests that output was more than 25% below normal levels during the period of full lockdown restrictions. This was a far larger decline than our analysis of the March data had implied, which had suggested that GDP was running at roughly 85% of its normal level during the week of lockdown at the end of that month.