# Jersey has outgrown Guernsey four to one over the past decade Canonical URL: https://www.bridgeheadcommunications.com/insights/2026/08/24/jersey-outgrown-guernsey-four-to-one-decade Published: 2026-08-24 By: Bridgehead Research Sector: Corporate > Jersey has grown at 2.4% a year in real terms since 2013 against Guernsey's 0.6%. New analysis from the Guernsey Deputy Scorecard team puts the decade-long divergence, and its 2023 gap of roughly £683m, into hard numbers. Bridgehead Research has published analysis putting Jersey's economic lead over Guernsey into hard numbers, drawn from the economy section of the [Guernsey Deputy Scorecard](https://www.bridgeheadcommunications.com/guernsey) launched this week. Jersey's economy has grown at 2.4% a year in real terms since 2013, ahead of the OECD average, while Guernsey's has managed 0.6%. Had Guernsey matched its neighbour's pace, its 2023 GDP would have been roughly £683m higher. ## The findings at a glance - Real compound growth, 2013 to 2023: Jersey 2.4% a year, OECD average 2.0%, Guernsey 0.6%. The same method is applied to all three, using each economy's own published annual real growth figures. - Jersey beat the OECD average over the decade. Guernsey managed less than a third of it. - In 2023 alone, Jersey's real GDP grew 7.3% while Guernsey's shrank 2%, even as Guernsey's nominal figure rose 5% to £3,488m. - Had Guernsey grown at Jersey's pace from its own 2013 base, its 2023 real GDP would have been around £4,171m rather than £3,488m — a £683m gap, against roughly £526m measured against the OECD's pace. - Jersey also publishes what Guernsey does not: an official crime rate per 1,000 population, a statutory freedom of information law in force since 2011, and a clean annual real-terms GDP series. _ Guernsey's GDP, 1965–2023, from the scorecard's economy section. The dotted lines show Guernsey's own 2013 GDP compounded at each economy's actual growth rate. The comparison is deliberately like for like. Each island's compound annual growth rate is calculated from its own published annual real growth figures over the identical 2013 to 2023 window: Statistics Jersey's “Measuring Jersey's economy: GDP and GVA 2023” for Jersey, the States of Guernsey GVA/GDP Bulletin 2023 for Guernsey, and World Bank data for the OECD members' average. On that basis Jersey grew at 2.4% a year, the OECD at 2.0%, and Guernsey at 0.6%. The single year 2023 sharpened the divergence. Jersey's real GDP rose 7.3%. Guernsey's fell 2%, even as its nominal figure rose 5%, and its finance and insurance sector alone accounted for £1,304m, 37% of the total. _ The scorecard's growth-in-perspective panel: borrowing, the decade's growth rates, and the 2023 gap. To give the gap a sense of scale, the analysis applies the States of Guernsey's own spending-to-GDP ratio of 16%: on that basis £683m of output corresponds to roughly £109m of equivalent spending power, about 2.9 times the cost of rebuilding Les Beaucamps High School, or over a third of the cost of the States' entire 5,154-strong workforce for a year. This is an illustration of scale, not a forecast, a Treasury estimate, or a claim that this money existed. GDP output is not government revenue. ## A second, quieter gap The analysis also documents a second gap, in what each island publishes about itself. Jersey publishes an official recorded-crime rate per 1,000 population; no Guernsey source has ever published one, and the scorecard had to rebuild Guernsey's crime series from eleven overlapping annual reports. Jersey has had a statutory Freedom of Information law since 2011; Guernsey operates a voluntary Code, having shelved a statutory right in 2021. And Statistics Jersey publishes a clean annual real-terms GDP series, where Guernsey's record spans three statistical vintages that its own bulletins say are not comparable. ## What Will Walter said ** “Jersey should take a bow. Over the decade that matters it has grown at four times Guernsey's pace, and it beat the OECD average while doing it. “I built the scorecard for Guernsey, but the growth chapter is really a tale of two islands. The £683m figure is not a forecast and it is not lost tax revenue. It is a way of making a decade of quiet divergence feel as big as it actually is. “There is a second gap that gets less attention. Jersey publishes a crime rate per head, has a statutory freedom of information law, and produces a GDP series you can actually follow. On the data that lets islanders judge their own government, Jersey is ahead too.” The full workings behind every figure, including the year-by-year counterfactual, are published on the [Guernsey Deputy Scorecard's economy section](https://www.bridgeheadcommunications.com/guernsey/economy) and its [references page](https://www.bridgeheadcommunications.com/guernsey/references). Every chart is downloadable and embeddable with its sources. ## Method All growth rates are real (inflation-adjusted) compound annual growth rates for 2013 to 2023, compounded from each economy's own published year-by-year changes: Guernsey from the GVA/GDP Bulletin 2023 (real GDP £3,280m in 2013 to £3,488m in 2023); Jersey from Statistics Jersey's “Measuring Jersey's economy: GDP and GVA 2023”; the OECD from World Bank Open Data (indicator NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG, OECD members). The 2.4% Jersey figure is Bridgehead's own calculation from those published annual figures, made to match Guernsey's window exactly; Statistics Jersey's own framing, on a different window, is that real GDP rose on average 1.6% a year over 2012 to 2022. The £683m gap: Guernsey's actual 2013 real GDP compounded forward at Jersey's actual annual growth rates gives a 2023 counterfactual of about £4,171m, against actual 2023 real GDP of £3,488m. The OECD-pace equivalent is about £4,014m, a £526m gap. The £109m spending-power translation applies Guernsey's own 2023 net-revenue-expenditure-to-GDP ratio of 16% and is an illustration of scale only. Statistical sources for every figure are listed in full at [bridgeheadcommunications.com/guernsey/references](https://www.bridgeheadcommunications.com/guernsey/references).