Trough to Boom: UK firm creation during the COVID-19 pandemic

This is a preview from the Quarterly UK Economic Outlook, May 2021.

Business creation is an important indicator to monitor especially in the face of large shocks such as Covid-19. In this analysis, we use data from Companies House to calculate new company registrations by sector and geographical area on a daily basis. We use data up to 30 March 2021, to infer how one measure of the supply side of the economy has evolved since the start of the pandemic. All our data and further interactive analysis can be accessed on the project website (www.ukfirmcreation.com).

Following a sharp drop during the initial national lockdown, business registration has strengthened in most sectors even during the second and third lockdown periods. New registrations were particularly strong for online retailers, food and drink providers, sports equipment production and pet care businesses. During the third lockdown, real estate activities recovered significantly relative to their 2019 levels. Our findings are consistent with firm creation activity in the U.S. (Buffington et. al, 2021) and European countries, such as France and Germany (Sneader and Singhal, 2021).

The analysis in this Box has been prepared by Alfred Duncan, Yannis Galanakis, Miguel León-Ledesma, Anthony Savagar.

Please see the full analysis and its findings in the pdf document.