U.K. Manufacturing Output Drops Sharply

News Brief
Via
Wall Street Journal

LONDON -- The recession in the U.K. manufacturing sector deepened in October, with output dropping a larger-than-expected 1.4% on a monthly basis, the Office for National Statistics said Tuesday.

October's decline is the eighth successive monthly drop and marks the longest consecutive contraction in manufacturing output since 1980. The monthly decline was the largest since March 2005.

On a year-to-year basis, manufacturing output dropped 4.9%, a decline unmatched since June 2002.

A Dow Jones Newswires survey of economists had forecast manufacturing output would fall by 0.5% on a month-to-month basis and by 3.2% in annual terms.