Publication - Statistics

GDP Quarterly National Accounts: 2021 Quarter 4 (October to December)

Published: 4 May 2022
Directorate: Chief Economist Directorate
Topic: Economy

This publication includes the updated second estimate of onshore GDP growth in real terms for the fourth quarter of 2021, along with additional breakdowns of GDP by categories of income and expenditure, and key household sector economic statistics.

Main results

In 2021 Quarter 4 (October to December), Scotland’s onshore GDP is estimated to have grown by 1.6% compared to the previous quarter, revised up from the previous estimate of 1.3% published on 16 March.
This release contains estimates that are consistent with the annual Supply and Use Tables for 1998-2018 for the first time. As such, results for all periods back to 1998 are subject to revision. Further detail on these changes is available in the Revisions section of the downloadable publication.
In quarterly terms, the level of GDP is unrevised at 1.1% below the level in 2019 Quarter 4 (Oct-Dec), prior to the impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
In output terms, the largest contribution to growth in Quarter 4 was from health and social work, mostly driven by a large increase in coronavirus vaccination, test and tracing activities towards the end of the year. Overall, services sector output increased by 1.7%, production sector output increased by 1.0%, and construction sector output increased by 2.8%.
Annual GDP is now estimated to have grown by 7.4% in 2021, after a fall of 10.6% in 2020.

Information about this release

The coronavirus pandemic has led to a number of challenges in collecting and processing the data to calculate GDP. As a result, estimates from 2020 onwards are subject to more uncertainty than usual and may be more prone to revision over time. International comparisons, and comparisons within the UK, should be made with appropriate caution for the levels of uncertainty and variations in methods in use by different statistical institutes around the world.

In recent months, the Scottish Government has developed faster monthly estimates of real terms GDP growth. The latest release is for February 2022. The next release, incorporating monthly GDP for March 2022 and the First Estimate for 2022 Quarter 1 will be published on 1 June.

About the GDP Quarterly National Accounts

This publication includes the second estimate of onshore GDP growth for 2021 Quarter 4 (October to December), which uses additional data released since the Quarterly GDP First Estimate published on 16 March 2022. The results in this release are comparable to the UK Quarterly National Accounts for Quarter 4 published on 31 March 2022.

The results in this release are consistent with the annual Supply and Use Tables for 1998-2018, and volume estimates of GDP have been calculated using double-deflated industry-level gross value added (GVA) for the first time. As such, results for all periods back to 1998 are subject to revision. Further detail on these changes is available in the Revisions section.

In addition to the second estimate of onshore growth in real terms, the GDP Quarterly National Accounts also includes:

Total GDP in nominal (cash) terms for the onshore economy and also the wider economy including offshore activities
Onshore GDP in nominal terms broken down using all three of the output, expenditure and income approaches
Experimental statistics estimates of the expenditure approach to GDP in real terms
Household Sector income and expenditure accounts for Scotland, including Gross Disposable Household Income (GDHI) and the Household Savings Ratio
Public sector revenues.

Data

The publication download includes a short summary of key results from the latest statistics. Full results for all components are available in the downloadable tables below