GDP Quarterly National Accounts: 2024 Quarter 3 (July to September)

Revisions

In this release, Scotland’s onshore GDP has been fully open for revision back to 1998 Q1. GDP and its components have been updated based on the annual weights and benchmark levels from the Supply and Use Tables for 1998-2021, published on 11 December 2024. This has led to changes over time in the level of all components of GDP to match the annual values in the supply and use tables, and revisions to the latest years due to changes in the base year values and relative weights of various components. Details of revisions can be found in the downloadable tables.

As discussed in earlier releases, GDP in volume terms is now based on estimates of double deflated GVA up to 2021, moving forward from 2019 for the first time. However, the aggregation of lower level series into broad industries by chainlinking continues to use weights for 2019. This is because the disruptions to economic activity during 2020 and 2021 do not provide a suitable baseline for statistics covering more recent periods. The most up to date weights for 2019 will continue to be used as the latest base year until weights for 2022 are available next year.

Estimates of gross disposable household income have been updated and constrained to the ONS regional statistics for 1998-2022 published in September 2024, and have been open for revision in all periods. The latest ONS statistics include a downward revision in all years to the level of disposable income in Scotland which is reflected in our estimates, and also leads to a downward revision to the level of the savings ratio.

In addition to these structural updates, estimates for more recent quarters from 2022 onwards have also been subject to the usual routine quarterly updates including the use of revised or late responses to business surveys and the update of estimates based on equivalent UK GDP data from the latest UK Quarterly National Accounts.

Details of revisions to GDP growth of each broad industry can be found in the downloadable GDP by volume tables, while revisions to the nominal value of other key statistics are detailed in the quarterly national accounts summary tables.

For annual GDP in volume terms, the fall of 12.0% in 2020 is unrevised in this latest update, while the rate of recovery in the following years has been revised down slightly. The latest estimates are that GDP grew by 8.9% in 2021 and 5.0% in 2022, followed by upwardly revised growth of 0.5% in 2023. The trend in the results since the start of 2022 is broadly unchanged because these results continue to be based on output data rather than balanced gross value added which also accounts for inputs. While there are upward and downward revisions seen in several industries, the most significant downward change which has impacted on the total is to the health and social work sector. The update to this sector reflects a similar downward revision to the UK as a whole introduced in September 2024.  

Measurement of GDP and consistency with results for the UK as a whole

There are some differences between the estimates for Scotland and the UK after 2019 due to the faster timescales for updates at UK level and differences between methodologies used. While the level of output in some industries and in total GDP are still broadly comparable to the UK as a whole, for many industries those comparisons should be made with caution. Specifically, whilst the UK statistics for real terms GDP growth are based on double deflated gross value added (GVA) up to 2022 (that is, the prices of both outputs and inputs are separately accounted for) and more recent periods are based on weights from 2022, the estimates for Scotland are only double deflated up to 2021 and weighted based on 2019.

On current timescales, we are likely to introduce double deflated GDP and weights for 2022 in the release for 2025 Quarter 3, following the production of Supply and Use tables for 1998-2022 (autumn 2025) based on the ONS Regional GDP statistics for the same period (summer 2025) which are derived from the ONS Blue Book 2024 statistics released in October 2024. At that time our weights will still be a year behind the equivalent UK figures, but both will then be based on economic activity after the Covid-19 pandemic and should be more comparable than they have been in recent years.

Users should continue to be cautious about drawing conclusions based on comparisons between Scotland and the UK or other countries for the periods when the economy was most severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, or comparisons of relative levels of GDP compared to the pre-pandemic level. The estimates of GDP from 2020 onwards are continuing to evolve as more data becomes available, and it is likely that these results will change again in future releases.