Baku, January 31, AZERTAC
Brexit is costing the UK economy £100 billion a year ($124 billion), with the effects spanning everything from business investment to the ability of companies to hire workers, according to Bloomberg.
An analysis by Bloomberg Economics three years after Britain left the European Union paints a bleak picture of the damage done by the way the split has been implemented by the Conservative government.
Economists Ana Andrade and Dan Hanson reckon the economy is 4% smaller than it might have been, with business investment lagging significantly and the shortfall in EU workers widening.
However, it is clear that UK economic performance started to diverge from the rest of the Group of Seven following the 2016 vote to leave the EU, and has widened since.
The underperformance is partly explained by business investment as firms put spending decisions on hold because of uncertainty about what life outside the EU would mean. Though some of that caution is dissipating, the UK has a long way to go to close the gap with its major peers. At about 9% of GDP, business investment lags the Group of Seven average of 13%.
The UK economy continues to be blighted by shortages of workers — and Brexit has played no small part.
Hanson and Andrade estimate that there are 370,000 fewer EU workers in employment in the UK than might have been the case had Britain stayed in the single market, a figure only partially offset by the arrival of non-EU citizens.