State of the NationGuernsey · Economy · 1965–2023
Guernsey’s GDP, 1965–2023.
Real growth has averaged well under 1% a year since 2013 — a fraction of the pace the island saw through the 1990s finance boom.
Economic Activity Return
A mandatory Economic Activity Return, established in 2022, enabled a full GDP recalculation back to 2013 - the vintage this chart labels "current".
Real growth, in perspective
Public borrowing, 2013 → 2025
£0 → £330m
The States had never borrowed a penny before 2013. In 2014 it issued a £330m bond, repayable in 2046. At the end of 2025, £155m of it was still owed by the States’ own General Revenue, which borrowed it to part-fund the capital portfolio. Most of the rest was lent on to the trading bodies and the Housing Association.
The £225m credit facility agreed in 2020 closed in 2022 with every balance repaid. With the trading bodies’ own loans included, the whole States group owed £403.5m at the end of 2025. Full breakdown below.
Real growth per year, 2013–2023
0.6%Guernsey
2.3%Jersey
2.0%OECD average
Compound annual growth, real (inflation-adjusted) terms — Guernsey’s own GVA/GDP Bulletin; Statistics Jersey; World Bank (OECD members). Same method applied to all three.
2023’s growth gap, vs. Jersey’s pace
£643m
Had Guernsey’s economy grown since 2013 at Jersey’s pace instead of its own, 2023’s real GDP would have been ~£643m higher (~£526m against the OECD average). At the States’ own spend-to-GDP ratio, that’s roughly £103m of equivalent spending power — about 2.8× the cost of rebuilding Les Beaucamps High School, or worth over a third (32%) of the States’ entire 5,154-strong workforce for a year.
Illustrative only — GDP output is not government revenue, and this is not a forecast, a Treasury estimate, or a claim that this money existed. See the source note below for the full calculation.
What growing slower than Jersey has cost Guernsey since 2013 — and counting
£302m
The equivalent public spending power Guernsey has given up every year since 2013 by growing at 0.6% instead of Jersey’s 2.3%, summed year by year rather than quoted for 2023 alone — then carried forward from 1 January 2024 at 103m a year, the most recent verified annual rate, pending Guernsey’s next GDP release. Not a one-off: this recurs every year growth stays this far behind.
Illustrative only, built the same way as the £643m/£103m “2023’s growth gap” figures above: GDP output is not government revenue, and this is not a forecast, a Treasury estimate, or a claim that this money existed or was ever spendable. The number above is a running total, not a live feed — it advances on a fixed assumed annual rate, not new data arriving each second.
Borrowing: States of Guernsey, debut £330m bond announcement (Dec 2014); States of Guernsey Group Consolidated Financial Statements 2025 (Appendix IV, States bond loans) and Accounts 2022 (note 17, on the end of the 2020 credit facility). The group’s full borrowings are set out in “What the States owes” below. Growth comparison: States of Guernsey GVA/GDP Bulletin 2023; Statistics Jersey, “Jersey’s Economy 2024: GDP and GVA” (published 3 October 2025); World Bank Open Data (indicator NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG, OECD members) — all compounded 2013–2023 the same way for comparability. 2023 growth-gap and translation: Bridgehead’s own illustrative calculation (full methodology and caveats in economy-urgency-stats.ts) — not a fiscal estimate; Les Beaucamps High School rebuild cost from BBC News. Running total: Bridgehead’s own calculation, summing each year’s own gap to Jersey’s pace 2014–2023 (not the single 2023 figure above), then continuing from 1 January 2024 at the 2023 annual rate pending Guernsey’s next GDP release (full methodology in growth-loss-ticker.ts) — illustrative only, as above.
GDP, 2023
£3,488m
+5% nominal on 2022
Population, Dec 2023
64,781
+1.4% on the year
Public sector employment
8.2–8.4%
of the population
Unemployment, Sep 2024
0.8%
241 people
Median earnings, Jun 2024
£42,672
-0.7% in real terms
GDP: GVA/GDP Bulletin 2023, Table 2.1.1, and historical figures for 1965–2008 supplied by the States of Guernsey Data & Analysis Service (see the chart above). Population: Quarterly Population, Employment and Earnings Bulletin, issued 29 Oct 2024, gov.gg/population (see “Population & demographics” below). Public sector employment: States Accounts 2024 / Bailiwick Express, citing published States data (see “Size of the public sector” below). Unemployment: States of Guernsey, “Unemployment statistics published up until end of September 2024” — 241 jobseekers registered at end of September 2024, a Job Centre snapshot, gov.gg/unemployment-statistics-September-2024. Median earnings: Quarterly Population, Employment and Earnings Bulletin, issued 29 Oct 2024 (same source as Population above) — £42,672 for the year to 30 Jun 2024, +5.3% nominal and -0.7% real on the year earlier.
Budget 2027
The 2027 Budget
The Policy & Resources Committee's proposals, published on 6 October 2026.
£4.2m surplus
Option A, General Revenue, before investment returns. The press release leads with this figure; the report sets out a choice between Option A and Option B.
£11.5m deficit
Option B, with £15.7m more committee spending than Option A, to meet part of the £33m by which committee requests exceeded the Option A limit.
£47m funding gap
The report’s own measure of recurring spending against recurring revenue. The headline surplus does not close it.
Pillar 2 is doing most of the work
One revenue line, revised up by £39m against the 2026 Budget’s own 2027 figure, drives the move from a £47.8m deficit to the headline surplus.
| Year | Baseline | Uncertainty cut | Estimate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | £79m | 5% | £75m |
| 2026 | £85m | 10% | £77m |
| 2027 | £93m | 15% | £79m |
Receipts start mid-2027, so the 2026 forecast carries the entire 2025 figure as a one-off catch-up. The 15% uncertainty cut on the 2027 estimate is the Committee’s own hedge: it says Pillar 2 revenue should not fund ongoing commitments, and expects it to fall over time as businesses adapt.
Growth Fund £15m
Paid from Pillar 2 over 2027–2029, with £5m in 2027. Projects must show measurable economic benefit and value for money.
Entrepreneur tax cap, in principle
Endorsed to attract entrepreneurs; the detailed design is still to be worked out by Policy & Resources and Economic Development. Alongside it, the Open Market tax cap for new arrivals rises from £60,000 to £95,000 by 2030.
Read our full analysis of the 2027 Budget →
Pillar 2: paragraphs 3.5 and 4.4 of the 2027 Budget report. Growth Fund and entrepreneur tax cap: paragraphs 7.14–7.17. Open Market cap: Appendix on income tax caps. Fuller committee cash limits, trading entities and measure-by-measure detail on the dedicated Budget 2027 page.
Income
GDP per capita, 1965–2023
Income per head in money-of-the-day terms and adjusted for UK inflation, across three GDP measurement vintages the States themselves say are not comparable, with Jersey's GDP per head alongside from 2012.
Not an official statistic — read before citing
The real-terms (lighter) lines are Bridgehead’s own calculation, not a published States of Guernsey or ONS figure. They deflate the nominal £-per-head values using the UK Retail Prices Index, not Guernsey’s own, because no continuous Guernsey price index reaches back to 1965 — so this line answers “what would this income buy at UK prices,” not “what did it actually buy in Guernsey.” It will disagree with the Bulletin’s own Guernsey-RPI real-terms figures for 2013–2023, and that mismatch is expected, not an error. The 1965–2013 nominal figures also rest on a Bridgehead population estimate, interpolated between real census years — two independent estimates compounding their uncertainty, so treat every pre-2013 figure here as illustrative of scale and direction, not a precise number.
Jersey line: Statistics Jersey’s official GDP per head of population, deflated by Statistics Jersey to constant 2024 prices. Guernsey’s real lines are in 2023 prices on a UK RPI basis, so the two levels are close to, but not exactly, like for like; the gap between them (about £12,000 a head in 2023) is far larger than that difference. Jersey publishes one continuous series; Guernsey’s 2013 break in method does not apply to it.
Jersey GDP per head, 2012–2023: Statistics Jersey, “National Accounts: GVA and GDP”, opendata.gov.je. Nominal GDP, all vintages: see the chart above. Nominal GDP per capita, 2013–2023: States of Guernsey Data & Analysis, Guernsey Annual GVA and GDP Bulletin 2023 (First Estimates), Table 2.2.1 — gov.gg/gdp. Nominal GDP per capita, 1965–2013: Bridgehead’s own calculation, dividing that vintage’s published nominal GDP by a population estimate for the same year, interpolated between the States’ own census / Electronic Census figures (gov.gg/census, gov.gg/population) where no annual figure exists. Real (UK RPI): Bridgehead’s own deflation of the nominal figures using the UK Retail Prices Index, ONS series CDKO, “Retail Prices Index: Long run series: 1800 to 2024: Jan 1974=100.”
People
Population & demographics
Current age structure (Q4 2023) and the States' own long-range population projections.
Current structure, Q4 2023
Projected population, 2022–2092
Age structure: States of Guernsey Data & Analysis, Guernsey Quarterly Population, Employment and Earnings Bulletin, issued 29 Oct 2024 — gov.gg/population. Population grew 1.4% (+910) in the year to 31 Dec 2023 (451 births, 605 deaths, net migration +1,064) — growth driven by migration, not natural increase. Projections: States of Guernsey Strategy & Policy / Data and Analysis, Annual Guernsey Population Projection Bulletin, issued April 2023 (latest available; no 2024/2025 edition was published) — under the central scenario, population peaks around 63,950 in 2027 before a slow decline to c.51,550 by 2092; under the States’ upper planning assumption (net migration +300/yr, agreed by resolution in October 2022) it instead rises gradually to c.69,500. Every scenario shows the working-age population (16 to state pension age) declining and the 85+ population more than doubling. Dependency ratios (dependants per 100 working-age adults) rise from 0.56 in 2022 toward a peak of 0.85 by 2083 on the UN definition, or 0.68 by 2088 once the phased rise in state pension age (65→70 by 2049) is factored in.
Also worth watching
Other headline indicators
32,067 employed
June 2024 (28,909 employed + 3,158 self-employed), +0.9% y/y and +6.4% vs June 2020.
RPI 4.3%
Year to June 2026 — gov.gg/rpi.
22.9% of roles
Finance, legal and accounting share of all employment roles, June 2024 (roles, not unique people).
Employment and finance/legal/accounting share of roles: States of Guernsey Quarterly Population, Employment and Earnings Bulletin, issued 29 Oct 2024, gov.gg/population. RPI: States of Guernsey RPI release, year to June 2026 — linked above.