United Kingdom National Accounts: The Blue Book 2024

Product Description

UK National Accounts, The Blue Book was first published in August 1952 and presents a full set of economic accounts (national accounts) for the UK. These accounts are compiled by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). They record and describe economic activity in the UK and are used to support the formulation and monitoring of economic and social policies.

Volume estimates of UK gross domestic product (GDP) are produced via a process known as chain-linking. This is so our estimates of GDP reflect our latest estimates on the structure of the UK economy. The last base year is typically moved forward by one year as part of the process of annual chain-linking.

However, in Blue Book 2022 and 2023, the last base year remained at 2019 to avoid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic-affected economy structure of recent years having an impact on subsequent periods. The effect of the coronavirus pandemic led to very large movements in industry-level estimates of gross value added (GVA), so these structures were unlikely to reflect more "normal" times. In addition, moving the last base year on to 2020 or 2021 would likely have led to unusual movements in our GDP volume series. Therefore, in line with international guidance, we kept the base year under review.

In Blue Book 2024, we have returned to our pre-pandemic approach to chain-linking and have moved the last base year on to 2022 as part of our production process. Because the base year has been moved forward over a longer time period than usual, the revisions to volume estimates as a result of changing base years may be larger than usual in Blue Book 2024.

In the UK, priority is given to the production of a single gross domestic product (GDP) estimate using income, production and expenditure data. Further analysis is available on:

• income analysis at current prices
• expenditure analysis at both current prices and chained volume measures
• value added analysis compiled on a quarterly basis in chained volume measures only