Measuring Recession and Recovery: An Economic Perspective Charles Bean Deputy Governor, Bank of England RSS Statistics User Forum Annual Conference 27 October 2010

Chart 1: GDP growth projection, August 2008 IR(a) Source: Bank of England. Conditioned on market interest rate expectations. The fan chart depicts the probability of various outcomes for GDP growth. To the left of the first vertical dashed line, the distribution reflects the likelihood of revisions to the data over the past; to the right, it reflects uncertainty over the evolution of GDP growth in the future.

Chart 2: Central GDP growth forecasts Sources: Bank of England and Consensus Economics. (a) Bars show the range of forecasts for the following year; diamonds show the mean forecast.

Chart 3: Survey measures of capacity utilisation(a) Sources: Bank of England, BCC, CBI, CBI/PwC and ONS. (a) Surveys from the Bank’s Agents (manufacturing and services), the BCC (manufacturing and services) and the CBI (manufacturing, financial services, business/consumer services, distributive trades). The BCC data are non seasonally adjusted.

Chart 4: Unemployment rates(a) Source: ONS (including the Labour Force Survey). (a) Rolling three-month measures, unless otherwise stated. (b) Recessions are defined as at least two consecutive quarters of falling output (at constant market prices) estimated using the latest data. The recessions are assumed to end once output began to rise. (c) Defined as those people who have been unemployed for more than twelve months divided by the economically active population. Data prior to 1992 are based on non seasonally adjusted, annual LFS microdata. These annual observations correspond to the March-May quarter.

Chart 5: UK GDP and employment: now vs 1990s Source: ONS.

Chart 6: Output after banking crises(a) Source: IMF and Bank calculations. (a) Sample of 88 banking crises. Output level relative to trend measured from the ten years before the crisis to three years before.

Chart 7: Company liquidations and GDP Sources: The Insolvency Service and ONS.

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