The UK has recorded its worst monthly GDP fall on record as coronavirus damaged the economy.
Official statistics from the ONS showed GDP growth fell by 20.4% in April, following a 5.8% fall in March. The monthly decline in GDP in April, when the country was in full lockdown, is three times greater than the fall experienced during the 2008 to 2009 economic downturn and was worse than economists had forecast.
The retail, travel and hospitality industries were all hit hard as was manufacturing and construction.
The figures show the huge task facing the UK economy as the government seeks to ease lockdown restrictions.
The ONS said the economy had suffered a huge shock since the start of the cornavirus pandemic in March when the country was forced into lockdown.
Jonathan Athow, statistician for Economic Statistics, said: “April’s fall in GDP is the biggest the UK has ever seen, more than three times larger than last month and almost ten times larger than the steepest pre-covid-19 fall. In April the economy was around 25% smaller than in February."
He added: "Virtually all areas of the economy were hit, with pubs, education, health and car sales all giving the biggest contributions to this historic fall. Manufacturing and construction also saw significant falls, with manufacture of cars and housebuilding particularly badly affected.
“The UK’s trade with the rest of the world was also badly affected by the pandemic, with large falls in both the import and export of cars, fuels, works of art and clothing.”
A sector by sector breakdown makes particularly grim reading. The services industry - which makes up 80% of the UK's economic output - fell by 19.0% in April 2020, the largest monthly fall since records began in January 1997.
It comes as hotels, bars, restaurants and all leisure activities had been forced to close.
Some however were more optimistic about the future, pointing out that April was always likely to be the worst month.
Neil Birrell, chief investment officer, at Premier Miton, said: “All the economic data out of the UK for April showed the economy to be in awful shape, in fact, worse than expected.
"Unsurprisingly production and output numbers were particularly bad. But April was a long time ago, when lockdown was having the greatest effect. Other countries’ data is improving as lockdown eases and the concern is that the UK is getting left behind and, as we are currently witnessing, equity markets are very sensitive to any threat to recovery.”
The stats also show that over the first three months to April UK output has fallen 25.1% with an average monthly drop of 10.4%.The loss of more than £50 billion of economic output over the period is the equivalent to the entire annual GDP of Croatia.
The worst affected sectors over the three months were construction with a fall of 40.1% followed by manufacturing on 24.3%, and services with 19%.
