Estimates Say GDP Down

GDP was estimated to have fallen by 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2012 comapred with the previous quarter according to a statistical bulletin from the ONS.

The production industries output was said to have decreased by 1.8% over the quarter, construction increased its output by 0.3% but in services there was no change. GDP as a whole remained the same as compared with Q4 2011. Transport, storage and communications increased by 0.7% with the largest contributions coming from motion picture, video and TV and programming and broadcasting. Business services and finance also increased by 0.4% with the largest contribution coming from employment activities. The agriculture sector fell by 0.6% on the same period in the previous year. While agriculture did not contribute to the change in GDP quarter on quarter, on the year on year analysis agriculture decreased by 3%.

The growth rate of the level of GDP was affected by two factors worthy of note. The level of GDP in the third quarter was helped by the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and there are some signs of a 'fall back' from these events. The other factor that should be borne in mind was the longer than expected maintenance of the largest North Sea oil field which reduced the oil and gas extraction component for the quarter.

Creative Industries Statistics

The creative industries contribution to the economy accounted for 2.89% of Gross Value Added (GVA) in 2009 an increase of 0.07% on 2008 in relative terms but in absolute terms GVA decreased by 1% from £36.6bn to £36.3bn. The biggest contribution to UK GVA from the creative industries came from publishing with 0.92%, then advertising with 0.55% and TV and radio with 0.38% (figures from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)). The sector accounted for 10.6% of UK exports in 2009 of which publishing and TV and radio accounted for the greatest exports of services with 3.1% and 2.6% respectively. There were 106,700 creative businesses in the UK in 2011, up to 5.1% from 4.9% in 2009 and 108,820 creative local units, an increase from 4.2% in 2009 to 4.3%. The biggest contribution to the number of businesses came from music and visual performing arts with 30,460 or 1.46% of enterprises and 1.21% of local units in 2011. Advertising accounted for 16,101 businesses or 0.77% of UK total and design 14,720 or 0.71%. Creative businesses employed 1.5m people directly or in a creative role in another industry. It amounts to 5.14% of UK employment. It is a small increase on 2008 when the number was 1.44m or 4.99% of UK employment. The music and visual and performing arts were the largest employers in the creative industries sector with 300,000 employees in 2009 or 1% of UK employment. Next came advertising with 0.92% of employment and 268254 people employed, then publishing with 0.84% and 243,809 people.

Creative Businesses in the UK

The number of businesses in the creative industries in the UK grew from 125,300 in 2007 to 157,400 in 2008. The sub-sector with the largest number of new businesses was the software, computer games and electronic publishing category which increased by 18,200 additional businesses from 56,800 in 2007 to 75,000 in 2008. Advertising, music and the visual and performing arts also had significant increases in numbers of businesses.

The increase in the number of creative businesses did not bring an similar increase in the number of people employed in the creative industries. In fact there was a significant fall in their number. The software, computer games and electronic publishing category increased their numbers by 40,700 to 681,600. The largest percentage increase was in architecture at 8%, from 120,700 to 130,100, a difference of 9,400. There were also increases in the numbers of people employed in the advertising (1%), art and antiques (6%), music and the visual and performing arts (4%) categories but these were offset by decreases in crafts (-7%), design and designer fashion (-18%), video, film and photography (-3%), publishing and radio and TV (-3%). There was an overall decrease of 7,000 in the number of people employed in the creative industries in the UK in 2008.

Last Survey Shows Film And TV Industry Growth

The last release in the ONS series of UK film and television survey statistics was released on the 9 December 2008. The UK film and television industry increased its exports of all services to £2,836m in 2008. It is an increase of 23% on 2007. Imports increased from £1,956m in 2007 to £2,215m in 2008 giving a balance of £621m in 2008 compared to £347m in 2007. The film industry's net surplus was £494m and the television industry's surplus was £198m.

The biggest importer of UK exports of services in the US with £736m or 55% followed by Europe with £432m or 32% and the rest of the world with 13%. The biggest percentage of imports was from Europe with 46% with a value of £384m. Imports from the US totalled £111m or 13%.

Television industry exports amounted to £1,101m in 2008 from £855m in 2007 and imports increased to £903m from £983m in 2007. The resulting balance is a surplus of £198m compared with £62m in 2007. The biggest importer of TV services from the UK was Europe with 57% totalling £624m. The US increased its spend to £211m or 19%. The rest of the world imported 24% of UK exports.

Imports to the UK from the US accounted for 62% of the UK total at a value of £555m. There was a slight increase in the imports from Europe to £273m in 2008 from £261m in 2007. There was an 87% response rate to the survey.

People Watch Over 3.5 Hours Of TV Every Day

Individuals watch 3.56 hours of TV every day compared with 3.96 hours in Q1 2009. Non-terrestrial channels growth rate is slowing down as digital TV penetrates 67.3% of homes. They have now reached a viewing level of 41.7%, over 40% for the first time. Commercial channels increased their share to 63.4%. Figures from IPA Q2 2009 Trends in Television Report.