London: The UK avoided a recession last year by the narrowest of margins after the cost-of-living crisis and industrial action hit the economy during December.
Gross domestic product was unchanged in fourth quarter following a revised 0.2 per cent decline in the previous three months, the Office for National Statistics said Friday. Output in December alone fell 0.5 per cent.
The figures meant that in the second-half of last year Britain dodged back-to-back quarterly contractions - the definition of a technical recession. The economy nonetheless was 0.8 per cent smaller than its size at the end of 2019, making the UK the only Group of Seven country that has yet to fully recover output lost during the pandemic.
For the whole of 2022, the UK economy grew 4 per cent. That's slower than the 7.6 per cent pace recorded in 2021 when the nation was recovering from pandemic lockdowns.
