London's Economy Today - Issue 168 - August 2016

The overview

• Bank of England reduces growth forecast while cutting interest rates to a new record low.
• Eurozone and US growth continues.
• The economic picture remains mixed post the referendum result.

Economic indicators

• New business orders in London falling with the PMI for new orders recorded at 44.7 in July 2016 compared to 49.7 in June 2016.
• Surveyors expect house prices to fall in London, as well as in England and Wales as a whole with the net house price expectations balance in London at -21 in July 2016. For England and Wales, the net house price expectations balance was at -12.
• Consumer confidence negative for both London and the UK as a whole. For Greater London, the consumer confidence score stood at -8 in July 2016, down from 9 in June 2016, while for the UK, the consumer confidence score stood at -12 in July 2016, down from -1 in June 2016.

London’s Economy Today supplement: London in comparison with other global cities

• London’s economy has grown at a faster rate than other Western cities like New York and Paris in real terms between 2006 and 2014. However, emerging cities such as Shanghai and Singapore have seen rates of growth that were twice as fast.
• London’s economy is predominantly services driven with its largest sectors being Financial and Professional Services. Although other global cities are also orientated towards services, cities like Berlin and Shanghai have much larger manufacturing sectors.
• In terms of labour productivity, London has some of the lowest estimates of output per job and output per hour. Moreover, whilst the average rates of productivity growth in London were similar to other Western global cities, they were weaker than emerging cities like Singapore. These productivity differences cannot be explained by industrial composition or workforce characteristics like skills, but could be reflective of different definitions and data measurement approaches across the global cities.

London’s Economy Today data to Datastore

Additional data from the latest edition of London’s Economy Today can be found on the Datastore.