Economic Overview of UK and What it means for International Students

The United Kingdom is one of the world's leading trading power and financial center. It is also the second-largest economy in Europe after Germany. Services, particularly banking, insurance, and business services, are key drivers of British GDP growth.  After UK's GDP grew by 4.0% in the year 2022, it is now expected that in 2023 the GDP will contract by 0.6% reason being high energy prices, higher taxes, lower govt. expenditure, and increasing rate of interest. For the year 2024, it is speculated that the growth will be of 0.9%. It is the only G7 nation for which recession is expected in 2023 as per the World Economic Forum.

In January 2023, the IMF stated that UK's economy may contract and may not perform better than the rest of the advanced economies, with the living cost hitting households. But it also feels that the nation is on the right path after it performed better than what was expected of it last year. If its economy will shrink, it would give rise to unemployment and companies won't make much profit.

Some of the major economic developments in the UK in early 2023 have been listed below:

• It is estimated that monthly real GDP has grown by 0.3% in January 2023. 

• After hitting down by 0.8% in December 2022, the services sector climbed by 0.5% in January 2023. The largest contrubutions to this growth was made by transport and storage, arts, entertainment and recreation activities, education, etc.
• After lying flat in December last year, the construction sector climbed down 1.7% in January 2023.

Also read:

• MBA in UK
• How to get UK Student Visa in 5 steps
• Study in UK: Timeline for September 2021 intake