Monthly GDP Estimates for July

Scotland’s onshore GDP fell by 0.2% in July, according to statistics announced today by the Chief Statistician. Output remains 2.4% below the pre-pandemic level in February 2020.

Output in the services sector, which accounts for around three quarters of the economy, grew by 0.4% in July, with increases in nine of the fourteen subsectors.

Output in the production sector contracted by 3.0% in July, with falls in the mining and quarrying, manufacturing, and electricity and gas supply subsectors. The largest contribution to the fall in GDP was the 9.9% drop in the electricity and gas supply subsector, due to unusually low levels of wind and hydro-generated electricity during the summer.

Output in the construction sector is provisionally estimated to have fallen by 0.4% in July, broadly in line with the UK as a whole over the course of the latest three months.

In the three months to July, GDP is estimated to have grown by 3.4% compared to the previous three month period. This reflects a slowdown in growth relative to the Quarter 2 (April to June) estimate of 4.7%.

Background

The Monthly GDP Estimate for July 2021 is available at:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/monthly-gdp-july-2021

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measures the output of the economy in Scotland. These monthly estimates have been developed to help track the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. These are designated as experimental official statistics. This means that they are still in development but have been released to enable their use at an early stage. All results are provisional and subject to relatively high levels of uncertainty.

All results are seasonally adjusted and presented in real terms (adjusted to remove inflation). GDP growth in this publication relates to Scotland’s onshore economy, which means it does not include the output of offshore oil and gas extraction.

Further information on GDP statistics is available at http://www.gov.scot/gdp

These estimates are compiled in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics – more information on the standards of official statistics can be accessed at: https://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/code-of-practice/