GDP monthly estimate, UK: April 2025

• Monthly real gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to have fallen by 0.3% in April 2025, following growth of 0.2% in March 2025.

• Real GDP is estimated to have grown by 0.7% in the three months to April 2025, compared with the three months to January 2025, largely driven by growth in the services sector in this period.

• Monthly services output fell by 0.4% in April 2025, following growth of 0.4% in March 2025, and was the largest contributor to the fall in GDP in the month; but grew by 0.6% in the three months to April 2025.

• Production output fell by 0.6% in April 2025, following a fall of 0.7% in March 2025, but grew by 1.1% in the three months to April 2025.

• Construction output grew by 0.9% in April 2025, following growth of 0.5% in March 2025, and grew by 0.5% in the three months to April 2025.

• An error has been identified in the consumer price inflation measures for April 2025; this error has no impact on the monthly GDP estimate for April 2025.

Monthly real gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to have fallen by 0.3% in April 2025, following growth of 0.2% in March 2025.

Real GDP is estimated to have grown by 0.7% in the three months to April 2025, compared with the three months to January 2025, with signs that some activity may have been brought forward from April to earlier in the year.

There was growth in all three main sectors in the three months to April 2025, with a rise of 0.6% in services sector output the main contributor to the increase in GDP, while production and construction output grew by 1.1% and 0.5%, respectively.

An error has been identified in the consumer price inflation measures for April 2025. Please find more detailed information in our Vehicle Excise Duty impact on Consumer Price Inflation note. This error has no impact on monthly GDP estimates for April 2025.

Note that early estimates of GDP are subject to revision in future publications (both positive and negative). Please see our Why GDP figures are revised article for more information. In this release, no previously published data are open for revision.

Of the three main sectors in April 2025, services output was the largest contributor to the monthly GDP fall, decreasing by 0.4%. Production output also decreased, by 0.6%, and these were partially offset by an increase in construction output of 0.9% in April 2025.

Looking over the longer term, GDP is estimated to have grown by 1.1% in the three months to April 2025, compared with the three months to April 2024. Over this period, services grew by 1.3%, while production fell by 0.2% and construction output rose by 2.0%.

Compared with the same month a year ago, GDP is estimated to be 0.9% higher in April 2025.

Services output is estimated to have fallen by 0.4% in April 2025, after increasing by 0.4% in March 2025, this was the first decrease in services output since October 2024. In April 2025, there were falls in 9 of the 14 subsectors.

Overall, the services sector is estimated to have grown by 0.6% in the three months to April 2025, compared with the three months to January 2025. There was a rise in output in 10 of the 14 subsectors in this period, with the largest positive contributions at the subsector level coming from:

• administrative and support service activities (up 3.3%)
• information and communication (up 2.4%)
• wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles (up 1.4%)

The largest negative contribution in the services sector in April 2025 came from the professional, scientific and technical activities subsector where output fell by 2.4% in the month, following a growth of 0.5% in March 2025. This was mainly driven by legal activities (down 10.2%), for further information on this industry's movements see our Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) changes section below. Advertising and market research also contributed negatively within this subsector, with a fall of 3.4%. The falls were partially offset by a growth of 6.7% in scientific research and development.

The next largest negative contribution at the subsector level in April 2025 came from wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles, where output fell by 1.2% in the month, following growth of 0.9% in March 2025. This was driven by a 3.2% fall in wholesale trade, except of motor vehicles and motorcycles, and there was also a fall of 3.1% fall in wholesale and retail trade and repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles. These falls were partially offset by a growth of 1.2% in retail trade, except of motor vehicles and motorcycles (Figure 4).

There was also a negative contribution at the subsector level from information and communication in April 2025, which fell by 1.4% in the month. This was mainly driven by a 2.2% decrease in output in the computer programming, consultancy and related activities industry and a fall of 6.9% in the motion picture, video and TV programme production, sound recording and music publishing industry.

The largest positive contribution in April 2025 came from administrative and support service activities, which grew by 1.6%, after a fall of 0.5% in March 2025. Growth in April was driven by a 3.6% rise in rental and leasing activities and a 2.1% rise in office administrative, office support and other business support activities.

Stamp Duty Land Tax changes

There was an increase in Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) rates in England and Northern Ireland on 01 April 2025. HM Revenue and Customs' (HMRC's) Residential Property Transactions data estimates that there was a monthly decrease of 63.5% in UK residential transactions in April 2025, compared with March 2025. This followed a 61.6% rise in monthly UK residential transactions in March 2025 compared with February 2025. Monthly Business Survey comments received suggested that the SDLT changes affected activity in April, most notably conveyancing solicitors and real estate agencies saw a sizeable decline in April, as property purchases were completed ahead of the changes.

The legal activities industry and the real estate activities on a fee or contract basis industry both saw the effects of this large decrease in UK residential transactions in April 2025 and the increase in transactions in March 2025. Legal activities output decreased by 10.2% in April 2025, following a rise of 4.1% in March 2025, and the real estate activities on a fee or contract basis industry fell by 6.5% in April 2025, following growth of 1.8% in March 2025 (Figure 5).

Consumer-facing services

Output in consumer-facing services increased by 0.1% in April 2025, following a growth of 0.6% in March 2025. The largest contributions at the industry level came from:

• growth of 1.2% in retail trade, except of motor vehicles and motorcycles

• growth of 2.4% in other personal service activities

The largest partially offsetting fall came from a 3.1% decline in wholesale and retail trade, and repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles.

Consumer-facing services output rose by 1.2% in the three months to April 2025, compared with the three months to January 2025. The largest positive contributions in this period came from:

• growth of 2.0% in retail trade, except of motor vehicles and motorcycles

• growth of 1.7% in wholesale and retail trade and repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles

• growth of 4.0% in sports activities and amusement and recreation activities

The largest partially offsetting fall came from accommodation, which fell by 1.4% in this three-month period.

More information on consumer-facing services data is available in our Consumer-Facing Services April 2025 dataset.

An overview of data sources used in our estimates of service output can be found in our GDP(o) data sources catalogue. Our Monthly Business Survey (MBS) is used for 43.6% of the services sector by industry weight. The turnover response rate for the MBS element of the services sector was 88.4% in April 2025. We would expect this to increase over time as more responses are received. Any new data will be included in future monthly GDP releases. For context, the average turnover response rates for the service sector in 2023 and 2024 now stand at 97.5% and 97.4%, respectively.

More detailed breakdowns on services are available in our Index of Services, UK: April 2025 release.

On the month, production output is estimated to have fallen by 0.6% in April 2025, following a fall of 0.7% in March 2025 and a growth of 1.7% in February 2025. The fall in April 2025 was mainly driven by manufacturing output decreasing by 0.9% in the month. There was also a 4.3% fall in electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply output. These falls were partially offset by mining and quarrying and water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities, which grew by 3.6% and 0.7%, respectively, in April 2025.

In the three months to April 2025, production output is estimated to have grown by 1.1%. This period saw growths in three of the four subsectors: manufacturing (up 1.2%), water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities (up 3.7%) and electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply (up 1.0%), while mining and quarrying fell by 1.3% in the three months to April 2025.

Manufacturing output fell by 0.9% in April 2025, following a 0.8% fall in March 2025 and growth of 2.4% in February 2025. Manufacturing was the largest contributor to the overall decrease in production output in the month with 8 of the 13 subsectors declining.

The largest negative contribution came from a fall of 5.2% in the manufacture of transport equipment, following growth of 5.0% in March 2025. This was driven by the manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers industry, which fell by 9.5% in April 2025. For more information on this industry’s movements, see the next subsection, Manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers industry.

There were also declines in output for the manufacture of machinery and equipment n.e.c. (down 2.1%) and the manufacture of chemicals and chemical products (down 2.5%). The largest positive contribution to manufacturing output in April 2025 came from the manufacture of basic pharmaceutical products and pharmaceutical preparations, which grew by 5.2%, following a fall of 5.8% in March 2025.

Figure 8 shows both the monthly and three-month contributions to manufacturing output from each of the manufacturing subsectors.

Looking more broadly, manufacturing output rose by 1.2% in the three months to April 2025, compared with the three months to January 2025, with 11 of the 13 subsectors growing over this period. The largest contributors to growth in this period were the manufacture of transport equipment (up 3.6%) and the manufacture of machinery and equipment n.e.c. (up 3.2%). These were partially offset by a fall in the manufacture of basic metals and metal products (down 3.0%).

Manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers industry

The manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers industry fell by 9.5% in April 2025. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) reported in their UK car and commercial vehicle manufacturing April 2025 publication that April's decline was driven by a combination of factors including model changeovers and lower demand in key export markets.

However, this fall follows three consecutive monthly growths including a rise of 7.4% in March 2025. And in the three months to April 2025, compared with the three months to January 2025, the manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers industry increased by 3.7%. Despite the positivity in the months before April 2025, the industry is estimated to be 12.7% below its peak, which was in February 2024.

Our Monthly Business Survey (MBS) is used for 72.9% of the production sector by industry weight. The turnover response rate for the MBS element of the production sector was 89.0% in April 2025. We would expect this to increase over time as more responses from businesses are received. Any new data will be included in future monthly gross domestic product (GDP) releases, in line with our National Accounts revision policy. For context, the average turnover response rate for the production sector in 2023 and 2024 now stand at 97.7% and 97.6%, respectively. A full set of data sources used in monthly GDP can be found in our GDP(o) data sources catalogue.

More detailed breakdowns on production are available in our Index of Production, UK: April 2025 release.

Monthly construction output is estimated to have grown by 0.9% in April 2025 for its third consecutive monthly growth. The rise in monthly output in April 2025 came from both new work and repair and maintenance, which grew by 1.4% and 0.3%, respectively.

Six out of the nine sectors saw increases in April 2025. At the sector level, the main contributors to the monthly increase were infrastructure new work and private housing repair and maintenance, which grew by 2.0% and 1.5%, respectively.

Construction output is estimated to have increased by 0.5% in the three months to April 2025, compared with the three months to January 2025. New work increased by 0.9% over the period, and repair and maintenance grew by 0.1%. Within new work, the largest positive contributor came from infrastructure new work, which grew by 3.5%. In repair and maintenance (R&M) the largest positive contributor came from public housing R&M, which grew by 2.7%.

Figure 11 shows both the monthly and three-month contributions to construction output from each of the construction sectors.

Construction data are sourced from our monthly business survey. For April 2025, the survey turnover response rate for construction was 71.6%. We would expect this to increase over time as more responses are received and any new data will be included in future monthly gross domestic product (GDP) releases. For context, the average turnover response rates in 2023 and 2024 now stand at 95.4% and 95.2%, respectively.

Further detail on construction output growth rates can be found in our Construction output in Great Britain: April 2025 bulletin.

There were some common themes that were anecdotally reported (as part of the ONS monthly business surveys) to have played a part in performance across different industries in April 2025. However, it is difficult to quantify the exact impact.

Comments received suggested the change in Stamp Duty Land Tax thresholds for home buyers in England and Northern Ireland affected activity in April. Most notably, conveyancing solicitors and real estate agencies saw a sizeable decline in April as property purchases were completed ahead of the changes.

Businesses from a range of industries provided comments citing the National Insurance Contribution changes on April 6 2025 and also, for those who export to United States of America, the possibility of tariff changes on exports. This is further supported by recent Business Insights and Conditions survey data. In late April, 17% of businesses with 10 or more employees reported that they expect to be affected by the United States tariffs in the next month. The most reported expected impacts were reduced demand and having to pass on additional costs to customers, both at 7%, as reported in our Business insights and impact on the UK economy bulletin.

On a similar note, in late May 2025, over three-quarters (77%) of businesses with 10 or more employees reported that their staffing costs (including wages, bonuses, national insurance (NI) and pension contributions) had increased over the last three months. This is up 41 percentage points, compared with late February 2025, and up 17 percentage points compared with a year ago. 

The level of accuracy of growth rates in these statistics is one decimal place. While growth rates can be calculated to more than one decimal place using our Monthly GDP and main sectors to four decimal places dataset, where a series is estimated to have shown no growth over a period. However, looking at further decimal places to gauge a direction is not recommended because of increasing levels of uncertainty.

Further information on measuring the data across our main data sources is available in:

• our Index of Services, UK: April 2025 bulletin

• our Index of Production, UK: April 2025 bulletin

• our Construction output in Great Britain: April 2025 bulletin

The main data source for these statistics is the monthly business survey (MBS) and response rates for each can be found below:

• our Index of Services response rates dataset

• our Index of Production response rates dataset

• our Construction response rates dataset

The Monthly GDP data sources catalogue provides a full breakdown of the data used in this publication.

In the UK, we produce estimates of monthly and quarterly GDP. Monthly estimates of GDP are based on only the output measure of GDP, while quarterly estimates of GDP reflect the average of the three approaches (output, income and expenditure).

Estimates for the construction industry within monthly GDP will differ from those published in the construction output release as they account for both the outputs produced and inputs consumed by the industry. There are also some coverage differences, given the use of the Annual Business Survey in their compilation.

Consumer-facing services industry classification

The industry breakdown used for consumer-facing services is based on the UK Standard Industrial Classification (SIC).

The following list contains the full SIC names of industries included in consumer-facing services:

• Wholesale and retail trade and repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles

• Retail trade, except of motor vehicles and motorcycles

• Rail transport

• Accommodation

• Food and beverage service activities

• Buying and selling, renting and operating of own or leased real estate, excluding imputed rental

• Veterinary activities

• Travel agency, tour operator and other reservation service and related activities

• Gambling and betting services

• Sports activities and amusement and recreation activities

• Activities of membership organisations

• Other personal service activities

• Activities of households as employers of domestic personnel

Intermediate consumption in early estimates of monthly GDP

Monthly GDP measures the gross value added (GVA) of each industry in the economy. GVA is derived as the industries output minus its intermediate consumption, where output is the value of goods and services produced and intermediate consumption is the value of goods and services purchased to be used in the production of goods and services.

Estimates of intermediate consumption are only collected annually. For most industries, our monthly estimates are based on deflated turnover or volume estimates of output as a proxy for GVA. Complete estimates of GVA are calculated as part of our annual Blue book process, here both output and intermediate consumption are measured. The annual process for calculating estimates of GVA is described in our Double deflation and the supply use framework in the UK National Accounts article.

The main assumption this proxy approach makes is that the relationship between output and intermediate consumption remains the same past the last year where annual GVA estimates are available. Therefore, the extent to which this proves not to be the case is one cause of revision between our early estimates of GVA and the fully balanced annual estimates. This relationship can be represented by the intermediate consumption ratio or IC ratio. This is the intermediate consumption of an industry divided by its output. The last year where annual GVA estimates are available is 2022 and the intermediate consumption ratios for each section are shown in Table 1.

When the annual data for 2023 are available, if the observed IC ratio of an industry is higher, it requires more product inputs to create the same amount of output, and hence GVA (other things equal) will be lower. We therefore expect an increase in the IC ratio of an industry to be associated with a downward revision in GVA growth. Similarly, a lower IC ratio in the most recent year would be associated with an increase in the GVA growth rate. 

The annual 2023 data will be included for the first time in our GDP Quarterly national accounts, UK: April to June 2025 published on 30 September 2025 and the GDP Monthly estimate UK: August 2025 on 16 October.

Strengths and limitations

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in March 2015. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled “accredited official statistics”.

Quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Gross domestic product (GDP) QMI.

Monthly growth rates can be volatile. This indicator should therefore be used with caution and alongside other measures, such as the three-month growth rate, when looking for an indicator of the medium-term trend of the economy. However, it is useful in highlighting one-off changes that can be masked by three-month growth rates.

Pausing of Producer prices publications

During work to improve the systems used to create the Producer Price Index (PPI) and the Services Producer Price Indices (SPPI), our quality assurance identified a problem with the chain-linking methods used to calculate the PPI and SPPI indices. For this reason, producer prices publications are currently on pause.

Our investigations so far have concluded that the problem affects the period from December 2008 onwards. However, investigations suggest that the main impact on annual producer price inflation rates was in 2022 and 2023, because of the large movements in relative prices during that period.

As these detailed price data are used within our GDP calculations, this may lead to impacts on the level of some industries, with revisions to estimates for services, production and construction particularly likely in 2022 and 2023. At an aggregate level for GDP, these revisions should be offsetting to an extent, while taken alongside regular data deliveries. Early indications suggest that there will not be a notable change in the recent economic trends seen in these data, but we will update users once more information becomes available. We do not plan any changes to the publication timetable for monthly, quarterly or annual GDP and will continue to use the current PPI estimates in these publications until updated data are available.

Consumer price inflation

An error has been identified in the Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) data provided to the ONS by the Department for Transport, which is used to calculate consumer prices inflation. This has the effect of overstating the headline Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) and Retail Prices Index (RPI) annual rates by 0.1 percentage points for the year to April 2025 only. Please find more detail in our Vehicle Excise Duty impact on Consumer Price Inflation note. This error has no impact on monthly GDP estimates for April 2025.

Seasonal adjustment

The monthly estimates of GDP are seasonally adjusted. Seasonal adjustment is the process of removing the variations associated with the time of year, or the arrangement of the calendar, from a data time series.

GDP estimates, as for many data time series, are difficult to analyse using raw data because seasonal effects dominate short-term movements. Identifying and removing the seasonal component leaves the trend and irregular components.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) uses the X-13-ARIMA-SEATS approach to seasonal adjustment. Seasonal adjustment parameters are monitored closely and regularly reviewed. For more information, please see our seasonal adjustment methodology page.

In our monthly GDP estimates, seasonal adjustment is applied at the industry level and the seasonally adjusted series are aggregated to create estimates by sector and total output. As part of our quality assurance approach, residual seasonality checks are regularly completed by our time series analysis team on both the directly seasonally adjusted series, and also the indirectly derived aggregate time series.

This topic is explored further in our Assessing residual seasonality in published outputs methodology published 09 May 2025.