Jersey · Economy · 2012–2024
Jersey’s economy, 2012–2024.
Real GDP has grown 26% in 12 years, 1.9% a year, and 38.5% of it now comes from one industry.
- Real GDP, 2024
- £6,859mReal GDP, 2024
- GDP per head, 2024
- £65,767GDP per head, 2024
- Finance's share of GDP, 2024
- 38.5%Finance's share of GDP, 2024
- Real growth since 2012
- 26%Real growth since 2012
Jersey vs Guernsey
Which economy is growing faster?
Real (inflation-adjusted) GDP, the one economic measure both islands' own statistics offices publish on a genuinely comparable basis - same real-terms method, 2013-2023 in both cases.
Jersey, real GDP growth/year, 2013-2023
2.3%
Guernsey, real GDP growth/year, 2013-2023
0.6%
OECD average, 2013-2023
2.0%
For context, not a rival island
Compound annual growth rate, 2013-2023: Jersey 2.3% a year in real terms, against Guernsey’s 0.6% and an OECD-members average of 2.0% - the same figures and method States of Guernsey’s own scorecard uses for this comparison in the other direction. Guernsey’s year-by-year line is derived here from its published “current vintage” real GDP levels (2013-2023 only - Guernsey has not yet published a 2024 estimate), so it stops two years short of Jersey’s 2012–2024 run; that gap is left blank rather than extended or backfilled. Both series are each island’s own real-terms (inflation-adjusted) GDP, deflated by its own statistics office - a genuine growth-rate comparison, not a comparison of the two economies’ absolute size.
Jersey: opendata.gov.je, "National Accounts: GVA and GDP" - GDP in real terms, constant 2024 values; opendata.gov.je, "National Accounts: GVA and GDP" - GDP per head of population; Statistics Jersey, National Accounts dataset page (CKAN ID a8d377e2-…-8f26e6933b95). Guernsey: States of Guernsey Data & Analysis, Guernsey Annual GVA and GDP Bulletin.
What the economy is
Where Jersey’s output actually comes from
GVA by sector, 2024, at market prices. The ten sectors below sum to the island's whole GDP, so a share here is a share of the entire economy.
Financial and insurance activities produced £2,637.8m of the island’s £6,858.5m total, 38.5% of output from 17% of the full-time-equivalent workforce. That concentration is the single most important fact about Jersey’s public finances. It is what makes the island wealthy, and it is what makes any promise about tax revenue a bet on one industry.
The same table read per job. Productivity is not evenly spread. The gap between the top and bottom sectors is more than tenfold, which is why headline GDP per head can rise without most islanders’ pay moving.
Income
GDP per head, 2012–2024
Constant prices, £ per resident. The measure that tells you whether growth is outpacing population, rather than just tracking it.
£55,585 in 2012, £65,767 in 2024. Set against the real earnings index further down this page, up just 18.5% since 1990, the two measures have not moved together. The difference between them is the distributional question the Assembly keeps returning to.
opendata.gov.je, "National Accounts: GVA and GDP" - GDP in real terms, constant 2024 values; opendata.gov.je, "National Accounts: GVA and GDP" - GDP per head of population; Statistics Jersey, National Accounts dataset page (CKAN ID a8d377e2-…-8f26e6933b95)
People
Population & migration
Jersey's resident population grew from 88,400 in 2000 to 104,540 in 2024. Almost all of that was migration, not births.
Net migration, year by year. Across the whole published run it adds up to 11,960 people, against 4,090 from natural change (births minus deaths). Natural change has been negative since the early 2020s. Without inward migration the island’s population would now be shrinking.
Statistics Jersey’s 2025-based projections, holding fertility and life expectancy at their mid-range assumptions and varying only net inward migration, the one assumption that is a policy choice rather than a forecast. By 2080 the scenarios differ by 51,740 people. These are projections, not predictions. They show what follows from each assumption, and none of them is Statistics Jersey’s bet on what will happen.
opendata.gov.je, "Total population, annual change, natural growth, net migration per year"; opendata.gov.je, "Population projections" - 2025 to 2080 (summary)
Housing
House prices against prices and pay
The Jersey House Price Index, the Retail Price Index and the Average Earnings Index, all rebased to 1990 = 100. Statistics Jersey publishes the three together precisely so they can be read against each other.
From a common base of 100 in 1990, house prices stand at 539.3 in 2025, earnings at 427.8 and retail prices at 364.2. House prices have risen roughly 1.3 times as far as pay over the same 35 years. Prices did peak in 2022 and have fallen back since, so the gap is narrowing from the top rather than from pay catching up.
The mix-adjusted price of the dwelling types first-time buyers actually purchase, rather than the whole market.
The only published like-for-like Channel Islands comparison, and Statistics Jersey’s own construction, a four-quarter rolling mean, because a single quarter of sales on either island is too small a sample to read as a trend. At Q2 2026 the Jersey mean was ££694,650 againstGuernsey’s £600,336.
opendata.gov.je, "House Price Statistics" - Annual House Price Index, Retail Price Index and Average Earnings Index; opendata.gov.je, "House Price Statistics" - First time buyer index; opendata.gov.je, "House Price Statistics" - Comparison with Guernsey
Prices
Inflation, on its own axis
Retail Prices Index, all items, 2000 = 100. Jersey's headline inflation measure, shown here at its own native base rather than rebased to sit alongside house prices and earnings.
Visitors
Passenger volumes
Everyone arriving at or leaving Jersey by air and sea, 1995–2025.
Total passenger movements peaked at 2,642,000 in 1997 and stood at 1,835,719 in 2025, a fall of 31% from the peak. Air traffic has held up far better than sea. The decline is overwhelmingly a ferry story. The 2020 and 2021 troughs are pandemic travel restrictions and should not be read as trend.
Government
Size of the public sector
Full-time equivalents, December return, 1999–2025. The public payroll has grown 59% since 1999; the private sector 28%.
December returns only, so the summer hospitality peak does not distort the comparison. The two series are on very different scales and the chart is not trying to hide that. The point is the shape, not the level. This is the short version; the Size of the State tab takes the same data further and adds where the money goes.
opendata.gov.je, "Labour market - Full-time equivalents (FTEs)" - FTE by sector since 1999 (SIC2003)
Also worth watching
Real earnings
Average earnings in real terms, June each year, 1990 = 100. Statistics Jersey deflates by the island's own Retail Price Index.
After inflation, the average Jersey worker earns 18.5% more than in 1990, over 36 years. The series is also visibly not a straight line. Real earnings fell for most of the 2010s and again through the 2022 inflation spike before recovering.
opendata.gov.je, "Average Earnings Index" - Real terms index of average earnings; opendata.gov.je, "RPI, RPI(X), RPI(Y), RPI Pensioners and RPI Low Income percentage changes" - RPI indices annual averages from 1949