London generated roughly 22.7% of UK economic output in 2023, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This article sets out what the official regional figures show, how to read them, and where the City and Canary Wharf fit in.
What do the latest ONS regional figures say?
The most recent edition of the ONS regional GDP series, covering 1998 to 2023 and published on 17 April 2025, puts London’s gross domestic product (GDP) at current market prices at £617,915 million in 2023. UK GDP in the same release was £2,720,029 million. ONS describes the 2023 figures as provisional.
Dividing one by the other gives London’s share: £617,915m ÷ £2,720,029m is about 22.7%. As of this writing, the ONS release page lists no later edition and gives no date for the next one, so these remain the latest official regional totals.
Why does output per head matter more than the total?
A large city will always produce a large total. The sharper measure is output per head. ONS puts London’s GDP per head at £69,077 in 2023, against £39,403 for the UK as a whole. That is about 75% higher than the national figure (£69,077 ÷ £39,403 is roughly 1.75).
London is also well ahead of its neighbours. The next-highest region, the South East, recorded £41,319 per head, so London’s figure is around 67% above it.
| Region (2023) | GDP per head | Real GDP growth |
|---|---|---|
| London | £69,077 | 0.2% |
| South East | £41,319 | 0.0% |
| Scotland | £37,192 | 0.7% |
| South West | £35,731 | 0.2% |
| North West | £35,635 | 1.1% |
| North East | £28,583 | 1.7% |
| UK | £39,403 | 0.3% (real GDP) |
Source: ONS, Regional economic activity by gross domestic product, UK: 1998 to 2023 (selected regions).
A worked example: what the gap is worth
Dividing London’s GDP by its GDP per head implies a population of about 8.9 million (£617,915m ÷ £69,077 is roughly 8.945 million). This is illustrative arithmetic rather than an official population estimate.
Suppose those 8.945 million people produced only the UK average of £39,403 each. Output would be about £352 billion (8.945m × £39,403). The actual figure is £618 billion, so the capital produces roughly £265 billion more than a UK-average economy of the same size would. That gap is a rough measure of the concentration of high-value activity the City, Canary Wharf, the West End and the wider professional-services economy represent.
How wide is the gap between the capital and the rest of the UK?
The spread across regions is considerable. At the other end of the table from London, the North East recorded £28,583 per head in 2023 and Wales £29,316, according to ONS. London’s figure is therefore about 2.4 times the North East’s (£69,077 ÷ £28,583 is roughly 2.42).
Within the table the pattern is not simply north versus south. Scotland, at £37,192 per head, sits above several English regions, including the South West and the North West, while the South East’s £41,319 is the only figure in the table within touching distance of the UK average and above it. Beyond London and the South East, every other region and nation in the ONS table sits below the UK average of £39,403.
This is why policymakers often describe the UK as having a single dominant economic centre rather than a spread of comparable ones. It also explains why London-specific shocks, such as a change in financial-sector fortunes, register in national averages more strongly than the equivalent shock in any other region would.
Is London’s economy still growing?
Slowly, in the 2023 data. ONS reports real GDP growth of 0.2% for London in 2023, against 0.3% for the UK. Every region grew, but unevenly: Northern Ireland was fastest at 2.1% and the North East second at 1.7%, while the South East recorded 0.0%.
One year of provisional data says little about direction. It does illustrate a point that often surprises readers: the highest-output region is not always the fastest-growing one. Regions starting from a lower base can post faster percentage growth from smaller absolute gains.
What part does financial services play?
Finance is the most visible part of London’s economy, though far from the whole of it. A Greater London Authority (GLA) page, published in December 2021 and drawing on 2019 figures, put financial services’ contribution at £63.4 billion, or 14% of London’s total output. It counted 402,108 financial-sector jobs, about 7% of all London jobs and 35% of the UK’s jobs in the sector.
The same page described professional and business services as contributing £225 billion to the UK economy, with around a third of the sector’s jobs based in London. Those are 2019 figures, so they describe the structure of the economy before the pandemic and should be read as a guide to proportions rather than a current count.
For how the physical districts have shifted since, see our look at how London’s financial district is changing and the latest picture in what is happening to London’s office market.
How should the headline numbers be read, and what do they miss?
Regional GDP is a measure of where output is recorded, not where wealth ends up. Three cautions apply.
- Commuting. Output is allocated to where work takes place, so people living outside London but commuting in add to the capital’s output without appearing in its resident population. This tends to flatter per-head figures.
- Company location. Large firms’ output can be attributed to the region of their operations in ways that do not map neatly onto where staff or shareholders live.
- Output is not income. High GDP per head does not mean the average Londoner is that much better off, once housing costs and the distribution of earnings are considered. Our piece on what London’s household income figures reveal covers that side.
Why does the capital’s output matter to the rest of the UK?
London’s concentration means national totals are sensitive to what happens in a relatively small set of activities. When the capital’s financial and professional-services firms are busy, the effect is felt in tax receipts, in jobs across supply chains and in the demand for property and services. When international clients and mobile wealth shift, as discussed in why international wealth still chooses London, the effect is similarly outsized.
That does not make London immune to slow growth, as the 2023 figure shows. It does mean the regional statistics are worth following alongside the national ones.
What to watch in future ONS releases
Three questions will shape how the picture evolves once newer data appear: whether London’s real growth moves closer to the national rate or away from it, whether its per-head premium narrows or widens, and whether provisional 2023 numbers are revised. Revisions are routine in these series, and a figure quoted today can change by the time it is finalised.
Readers should also keep the difference between GDP and gross value added (GVA) in mind. ONS publishes both, and they are not interchangeable: GDP at market prices includes taxes less subsidies on products, while GVA does not. Figures quoted from one series should not be set beside figures from the other without checking which is which. The numbers in this article are all GDP, taken from a single ONS release, so they can be compared with one another.
It is also worth remembering that a backward-looking statistical release describes an economy that has already moved on. Nothing in a 2023 dataset speaks to current hiring, current office demand or the mood in the City today, and it should not be read as a forecast.
Conclusion: a big number with limits
The official data support a simple statement: London is a high-output economy, producing close to a quarter of UK GDP and roughly 75% more per head than the national average. They do not, on their own, explain why, or tell individual readers how that translates into earnings, property values or opportunity. Used carefully, the figures are a useful baseline for understanding the City’s weight in the national economy.
This article is general information, not personalised financial advice; rules, rates and statistics change.
Sources: Office for National Statistics; Greater London Authority
