How the figures are made

The National Statistician can type a release in by hand, or run the ONS model, which follows the method below. Either way, they check the figures before they are published.

1. What goes in: the values from the last release (or the starting values), the Bank Rate set by the Governor of the Bank of England (or last release's rate if there has been no new decision), the title and long title of every Act given Royal Assent since the last release, and government approval from the last release.
2. Step 1, the Acts. Each Act is sorted by the words in its titles. Spending Acts ("fund", "invest", "NHS", "school", "housing", "rail", "benefit" and so on): GDP growth +0.10, inflation +0.05, borrowing +£1.0bn, approval +0.5. Tax cuts ("tax", "duty" or "VAT" with "cut", "relief", "reduce" or "abolish"): GDP growth +0.10, inflation +0.05, borrowing +£1.5bn, approval +1.0. Tax rises (the same words without a cut): GDP growth -0.05, borrowing -£1.5bn, approval -1.0. Jobs and business ("business", "trade", "employment", "wage", "apprentice" and so on): GDP growth +0.05, unemployment -0.05, approval +0.3. Anything else: approval +0.2.
3. Step 2, GDP growth moves 20% of the way back towards its trend of 1.5%, falls by 0.15 for every point the Bank Rate is above 3.5% (rises if it is below), plus the Acts, plus a little random noise (up to ±0.15).
4. Step 3, inflation moves 10% of the way back to the 2% target, falls by 0.2 for every point the Bank Rate is above 3.5%, rises by 0.15 for every point GDP growth is above trend, plus the Acts and noise (up to ±0.1).
5. Step 4, unemployment falls by 0.2 for every point GDP growth is above trend and moves 10% of the way back to 4.5%, plus the Acts and noise (up to ±0.05).
6. Step 5, public sector borrowing falls by £2bn for every point GDP growth rose, moves 10% of the way back to £12bn, and rises by £0.5bn for every point the Bank Rate rose, plus the Acts and noise (up to ±£0.5bn).
7. Step 6, government approval rises 3 points for every point GDP growth rose, falls 2 points for every point inflation rose and 4 for every point unemployment rose, and moves 10% of the way back to 40%, plus the Acts and noise (up to ±1).
8. Step 7, limits. No indicator moves more than this in one release: GDP growth ±0.5 points, inflation ±0.6, unemployment ±0.3, borrowing ±£3bn, approval ±4. Every value stays inside its allowed range and is rounded to one decimal place. The Bank Rate is always the one the Governor set.
9. The noise is seeded from the last release and the date, so running the model twice on the same day gives the same answer.
10. When Cloudflare's AI is available, it is given all of the above plus the formula's own answer and asked for its own values and commentary. Its answer is checked and pulled back inside the limits in step 7; if there is no AI or its answer is not usable, the formula's answer is used.

The indicators