Official data showed on Wednesday that the rapid recovery witnessed by the British economy at the beginning of this year stopped last April due to sharp declines in the output of the industrial and construction sectors.
These data constitute a new challenge for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak before elections held on the fourth of next July.
The National Statistics Office said that the gross domestic product did not witness a change last April after growing by 0.4% on a monthly basis in the previous March.
This data came after another labor market release yesterday, Tuesday, which showed an increase in unemployment with continued strong wage growth.
Rachel Reeves, who may become finance minister if the opposition Labor Party wins the country’s elections, used the data to criticize key messages in Sunak’s election campaign.
She said after the data was published, “Rishi Sunak claims that we have overcome the matter, but the economy has stagnated and there is no growth.”
The unemployment rate recorded a slight increase in Britain to 4.4% during the three months ending at the end of last April, compared to 4.3% at the end of the previous March, and thus the increase will continue since the end of 2023.
This rate is significantly higher than the 3.8% recorded at the end of 2023, according to data from the Office for National Statistics.
Salary growth excluding bonuses stabilized at 6% during the last three months ending in late April, but the rise in earnings in real terms, taking into account the impact of inflation, accelerated to 2.9%.
Inflation fell sharply in April to 2.3% on an annual basis, the lowest level since July 2021.
Susannah Streeter, head of the financial and markets department at Hargreaves Lansdowne, a specialist, considered that the labor market “is stabilizing, but not quickly enough for decision makers (at the Bank of England) to have confidence to begin lowering interest rates.”
