London's Economy Today - Issue 179 - July 2017

The overview

• UK GDP grows modestly in Q2 2017
• Labour market shows improvement, but real earnings concerns persist
• Government fails the OBR’s new fiscal ‘stress test’

Economic indicators

• Although down from May (58.9), the New Business Index pointed to a further rise in new business in London in June (54.6). An index reading above 50.0 indicates an increase in new orders from the previous month.
• At 52.2, the Business Activity Index suggested that London firms continued to experience a rise in output during June. However, down from 55.7 in May, the rate of growth slowed to is weakest pace in almost a year.
• Most surveyors reported that London’s house prices continued to fall in the three months to June 2017. The net balance in June was -45 which, though still quite negative, was an improvement on the -50 seen in May.

London’s Economy Today supplement: London’s Creative Industries – 2017 update

This analysis shows the importance of the creative industries to London in terms of output, employment and productivity.

• London’s creative industries represent a significant part of the capital’s economy. In 2015, GVA of the creative industries in London was estimated at £42.0 billion, accounting for an estimated 11.1 per cent of London’s total GVA, and for just under half (47.4 per cent) of the UK creative industries total.
• And the wider creative economy is a growing sector for employment. There were 882,900 jobs in London’s creative economy in 2016, up by almost a quarter (24.2 per cent) since 2012. The creative economy now makes up around 16.9 per cent of all jobs in the capital, compared to 7.9 per cent of jobs in the rest of the UK. The paper also looks at employment in London's creative sector by pay, employment status and socio-economic characteristics (place of birth, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic group).
• In-line with its higher pay, London’s creative industries are also highly productive. GVA per workforce job (as a proxy for productivity) was equal to £71,400 in 2015 – 22.2 per cent higher than the average across all sectors of the London economy, and 35.5 per cent higher than the average for the creative industries nationally.

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