Latest data on the Scottish economy – Update 14th August 2020

This update provides a snapshot of new data on the Scottish economy and households.

Consumer interest exceeded last year’s levels concurrently for most products and services for the first time since the start of the lockdown. Scotland has also seen a large number of businesses re-open in recent weeks and it now has the lowest share of temporarily closed businesses across the UK. However, Scottish GDP data, which are to be released next week, are likely to show that Scotland was in a recession during the first half of 2020. This comes in the face of a high degree of labour market slack as the number of vacancies continued to decline across most sectors in July. Salaries and wages for new positions also continued to decline for the 4th consecutive month. The large increase in people claiming universal credit (see our labour market update from earlier this week) appears to be translating into more families hitting the ceiling on benefit support set by UK Government (the Benefit Cap). The outlook for households facing financial difficulties due to the economic fallout from Coronavirus remains extremely challenging.