Index of Production, UK: February 2025

• Monthly production output was estimated to have increased 1.5% in February 2025; this follows a fall in January 2025 (down 0.5%) and a rise in December 2024 (up 1.0%).

• The rise in monthly output in February 2025 resulted from increases in “manufacturing” (up 2.2%), “electricity and gas” (up 2.0%) and “water supply and sewerage” (up 1.1%); these were partially offset by a decrease in “mining and quarrying” (down 3.0%).

• The monthly increase in manufacturing output during February 2025 saw widespread increases in 10 of its 13 subsectors, with 6 of those 10 subsectors having fallen during January 2025.

• The largest positive contributions to manufacturing output in February 2025 came from “computer, electronic and optical products” (up 9.8%), “basic pharmaceutical products” (up 4.4%) and “transport equipment” (up 1.8%).

• Production output for the three months to February 2025 was estimated to have increased 0.7% compared with the three months to November 2024.

• “Manufacturing” (up 0.6%) was the main contributor to the three-monthly rise in February 2025, supported by smaller positive contributions from “water supply and sewerage” (up 2.8%) and “electricity and gas” (up 1.6%); this was partially offset by a decrease in “mining and quarrying” (down 0.7%).

The Index of Production (IoP) uses data from a variety of sources. It is calculated by taking turnover and removing the effect of price changes, or by using direct volume estimates.

Most of these data are collected as “turnover values” through the Monthly Business Survey (MBS). In addition, direct volume series are collected by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), and the International Steel Statistics Bureau (ISSB) for steel industries.

The MBS is fully online. Business owners can log on from any location and submit their data at an appropriate time.

From January 2018, Value Added Tax (VAT) data have also been included across 64 production industries for small- and medium-sized businesses. More information is available in our VAT turnover data in National Accounts: background and methodology.

A comprehensive list of the IoP source data can be found in our Gross domestic product (GDP) data sources catalogue.

Response rates for February 2025

For February 2025, MBS response rates were 76.1%, based on forms returned. This accounted for 88.3% of total turnover coverage of the sample population. For further information, see our current and historical MBS (production) response rates dataset.

Quality and methodology 

The data reported in IoP bulletins and datasets are estimates that are subject to uncertainty, such as sampling variability and non-sampling error. More information is available in Section 2 of our Uncertainty and how we measure it for our surveys web page.

More quality and methodology information (QMI) on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Index of Production, UK QMI.

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in April 2014. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled “accredited official statistics”.

Revisions to Index of Production

In line with the National Accounts Revision Policy, this release gives data for February 2025, with January 2025 also open for revision.

We have also included revisions to the monthly data from January 2023 to December 2024 as a result of revisions incorporated in the GDP quarterly national accounts, UK: October to December 2024 published on 28 March 2025.

Pausing of Producer Prices publications

As announced in a statement on 21 March 2025, during work to improve the systems used to create the Producer Price Index (PPI) and the Services Producer Price Indices (SPPI), our quality assurance identified a problem with the chain-linking methods used to calculate the PPI and SPPI indices.

Please see the updated statement released today (11 April 2025) for further information.

As these detailed price data are used within our calculations, along with gross domestic product (GDP), this may lead to impacts on the level of some industries with revisions to estimates likely in 2022 and 2023. At an aggregate level for GDP, these revisions should be offsetting to an extent, while taken alongside regular data deliveries. Early indications suggest that there will not be a notable change in the recent economic trends seen in these data, but we will update users once more information becomes available. We do not plan any changes to the publication timetable for IoP and will continue to use PPI estimates compiled under the current methodology in these publications until updated PPI methods and data are available. We will provide further information on the likely effects as soon as is practicable.

Seasonal adjustment

The monthly estimates of IoP are seasonally adjusted. Seasonal adjustment is the process of removing the variations associated with the time of year, or the arrangement of the calendar, from a data time series.

IoP estimates, as for many data time series, are difficult to analyse using raw data because seasonal effects dominate short-term movements. Identifying and removing the seasonal component leaves the trend and irregular components.

The ONS uses the X-13-ARIMA-SEATS approach to seasonal adjustment. Seasonal adjustment parameters are monitored closely and are regularly reviewed. For more information, please see our seasonal adjustment methodology page.

In our IoP estimates seasonal adjustment is applied at the industry level and the seasonally adjusted series are aggregated to create estimates by sector and total IoP output. As part of our quality assurance approach, residual seasonality checks are regularly completed by our time series analysis team on both the directly seasonally adjusted series and the indirectly derived aggregate time series.