UK suffers second highest fall in wealth of any major economy in 2024
UK suffers second highest fall in wealth of any major economy in 2024
Posted by snowkingg
UK suffers second highest fall in wealth of any major economy in 2024
UK suffers second highest fall in wealth of any major economy in 2024
Posted by snowkingg
33 Comments
TLDR;
* House price growth remains slow – this is bad for “wealth” as it’s the vast majority of people’s net worths.
* FTSE is perfoming poorly in comparison to NASDAQ and S&P500
What has happened to the country? I’ve been all around Europe and I don’t see the noticeable decline anywhere like I do in the UK.
This article is bullshit reform propaganda. I reads like it was written on someone’s phone. And wtf is Cityam news? 😂
oh noooo housing prices are slowly becoming more realistic and accessible to people who actually need them nooooooo
With the state of wealth inequality in the UK, what this article really shows is that the really wealthy people are slightly worse off while the average person is barely treading water.
A country that suffered years of turmoil and division, controlled by an inept govt who changed leaders like their knickers, who sold off all the family jewels to foreign owners, who forced austerity on the masses, who gave us Brexit with no plan or clue of how it would work (and nobody who voted for it bothered to ask), and who ran up a 3 trillion debt (where did all the money go?). Then we wonder why wealth has fallen. You get what you vote for folks.
This is defeatist, fear-mongering propaganda from a Swiss bank that is just trying to drum up some business (in one of Europe’s largest and wealthiest economies).
Here is some data from a reputable source (the IMF):
The UK’s GDP per capita has risen pretty sharply against Germany and France (Europe’s other largest economies) since 2020:
2020:
France 39.23 thousand; United Kingdom 40.23 thousand; Germany 47.34 thousand.
2025:
France 46.79 thousand; United Kingdom 54.95 thousand; Germany 55.91 thousand;
Source: https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD/FRA/GBR/DEU
Honestly that’s good news if you look at the metrics involved.
Quite apart from the fact we’ve long since attracted all the good investment possible, with wage stagnation and privatisation any extra wealth created is usually kept from circulation. When house prices stall though, people who live in the homes keep them and those who invest in them are eventually forced to sell because appreciation doesn’t help them outpace mortgage payments.
Same with the stock market. Actual value doesn’t disappear; just the fictional sentiment and the inflated prices that brings. We’re not really talking pensions and institutions losing out here either due to those investing long-term, just those people living off the growth in ‘wealth’.
I hope Trump’s tariffs do dry up new investment from abroad. Most places are going to put money into domestic production capabilities to hedge against future changes like tariffs and we should do the same. Hopefully this contraction leads to the obvious renationalisation of utilities to prevent us syphoning so much of our actual wealth abroad to America (British Gas) or France (EDF). We have so much renewable energy and we could use that to subsidise everyone here, meaning everyone keeps more of their wealth and we retain a constant bonus to growth because energy use is also proportional to actual production.
So its bad if house prices go up , bad if they don’t.
Stock market and house price rises isn’t necessarily national wealth of a long term productive kind.
Bold of you to assume we had any wealth to begin with.
It has nothing to do with rich people leaving despite trying to spin it like that, it’s just everybody being equally affected by inflation.
First paragraph:
*”Average wealth in Britain fell the second most of any major economy in 2024, according to a closely followed global study, piling fresh scrutiny on the country’s* [*battle to stem an exodus*](https://www.cityam.com/people-and-organizations/wealth-exodus/) *of its wealthiest residents and and kickstart its flagging economy.”*
Fifth and sixth paragraphs:
*“Average real-term wealth per adult in the United Kingdom fell in 2024 because living-cost pressures and rising interest rates moved faster than either house prices or most financial markets. Naturally, this dented people’s ability to build or retain wealth,” he told City AM.Median household assets in the UK grew by over five per cent, however, meaning it was the top end of the UK’s wealth distribution that suffered major dents to their net worth, Frey added.”*
Why the fuck would we base our concept of wealth on houses? Or is wealth useless as a metric anyway? If my house goes up by 10% it’s completely irrelevant to my life – just means that someone somewhere assumes I can afford to buy more or be taxed more!
Labour is investing a lot of money into infrastructure so we can make more money in the future. And we’re increasing defence spending because the world is on the brink of war. So I’m not surprised by this. Although it’s clearly a biased article.
This report seems to have a mismatch of data. It claims the UK has 2.6 million millionaires while France has nearly 2.9 million when all the data points to the UK having upwards of 3 million from 2022-2024. If you look it up City AM claims that the UK lost 400k millionaires in 2024 based on this report (which is obviously untrue since total migration out of the UK was around 400k).
Regardless, the wealth data isn’t even that bad. For context, we had a 6.5% net increase in wealth in the UK since 2020 after accounting for inflation which is higher than most European countries. The US had 9.5% with most of that coming from 2024.
We also had a massive growth in net median wealth (the US had a monumental increase in net median wealth while having very low growth in net wealth per household)
The UK also had a -2 movement in the Gini coefficient (the measure of inequality), meaning that inequality has gotten significantly better in the last 5 years.
The article also attributes this mainly to sluggish growth in house prices, which makes sense considering 42% of household wealth in the UK is from house prices. It also talks about sluggish LSE performance but only 11% of Briton’s wealth is stored in securities and financial instruments so it is definitely a smaller factor.
The headline is super misleading, wealth for average people increased, it was only the mega rich who lost out.
>Median household assets in the UK grew by over five per cent, however, meaning it was the top end of the UK’s wealth distribution that suffered major dents to their net worth
I can remember reading about this since 2019, this isn’t anything new
Because they’re leaving. The rich are leaving in droves. I have seen it in the tech industry. Many of the big known investors have up and moved. Still investing in the UK, but moving on themselves due to the cost of living and and hostile business environment. A nations economy is healthy when entrepreneurialism is high. It isn’t the other way around. You need to encourage entrepreneurship. That doesn’t mean everyone starts a multi million dollar company, but have a side hustle. In the UK, we have an absolutely dire spirit in that sense.
I will chuck my 2p worth in
Just my opinion but the single biggest issue is and was energy prices.
Governments dating back as far as I can remember have tried and failed to get a grip with the uk producing it own energy .
From thatcher trying to build nuclear to be out voted as coal was cheaper
To Blair losing to fucking green peace
The war in Russia drove the prices so high the government had to start paying people’s fuel….
That in turn drove inflation sky high which in turn drive rates up.
Meanwhile we are allowing the energy companies to post record profits year in year
Here’s extract from end fuel poverty
Just 20 energy companies have made a staggering £457 billion in profits since the start of the energy bills crisis. [1]
As of the end of August, following 2024 interim results, profits have amounted to over £457 billion since just before the energy crisis started.
Meanwhile we are being gaslighted into hating old people and the disabled as scoungers
I’ve never been overly keen on government taking over companies… but that’s enough
Starmers greatest legacy could well be great British energy.
Also for context
fully renationalising the UK’s energy supply could cost around 90 billion.
Turns out the wealthiest didn’t actually leave. I’m shocked that the top notch journalists at CityAM didn’t pick this up.
[millionaire exodus did not occur](https://taxjustice.net/press/millionaire-exodus-did-not-occur-study-reveals/)
Mass immigration, huge wage depression. Death of any local communities particularly in working class areas. Manufacturing pretty much killed off it last 30 years meaning a lot of talented people are either unemployed or in dog shit service sector jobs for big corporations.
For the people saying this is caused by Brexit, taking the longer period of 2020-2024, using the same measurement as the headline, the UK’s increase in average wealth of 7% is lower than Norway and Denmark but higher than:
Greece, Poland, Spain, Germany, France, Hungary, Switzerland, Netherlands, Italy and Austria.
And on the next page there is a map of Europe showing that in the period 2020-2024 11 EU/EEA countries have seen a fall in average wealth unlike the UK where average wealth has risen.
Page 16 and 17:
https://www.ubs.com/global/en/wealthmanagement/insights/global-wealth-report/_jcr_content/root/contentarea/mainpar/toplevelgrid_5684475/col_1/innergrid/col_2/actionbutton.1189083814.file/PS9jb250ZW50L2RhbS9hc3NldHMvd20vc3RhdGljL25vaW5kZXgvZ3dyLTIwMjUtZGlnaXRhbC5wZGY=/gwr-2025-digital.pdf
Nobody mentioning the Res-Non-Dom laws that began in April. There’s been an exodus of high and ultra high net worths who’ve left the country. Forced to pay 40% tax on foreign earned income. Stupid ass law that doesn’t help anyone
brexit benefits about to kick in ANY day now…. yep…. aaaany day now….
If an article starts with “The wealthy are leaving” like its something that will doom us all, I instantly suspect this is a right wing propaganda piece. Considering what some others in the comments have said here, the FTSE its out performing S&P500 so it is not that black and white as this articles title implies.
This website also has shit on it like defending fossil fuels and slandering net zero because of the cost which is completely besides the point lol
Try again.
“Median household assets in the UK grew by over five per cent, however, meaning it was the top end of the UK’s wealth distribution that suffered major dents to their net worth, Frey added.”
Oh no. This is sad. Anyway.
It’s certainly a weird situation in the UK for sure. My partner and I have seen significant boosts in our work life meaning our combined take home is around 200% more than it was in 2022, but we’re making cutbacks now and feel like we have less disposable income than we did back then. Not that we ever really complain about our situation and more so that it feels odd to be in a position I had longed more and yet feel like we are standing still.
Every god damn week. Media is playing us
Monday: ‘record growth in the G7’
Tuesday: ‘UK inflation falls as economic growth collapses’
Wednesday: ‘UK grew faster than expected in Q1’
Thursday: ‘UK growth revised to zero in Q1’
Friday: ‘UK rats starve as no one has food’
Economists are Instagram/TikTok influencers in suits. It’s just opinions from charlatans.
It’s going to get far worse, and it probably needs to for Brits to actually wake up and realise that stagnation is a curse
This can’t be true: Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer tell us it’s been an amazing success and we’re in a stable, booming economy now and they never lie do they?
I wouldn’t worry guys you weren’t seeing a penny of that money. They don’t pay tax and they don’t contribute.
It’s a failed economy when the only path to becoming wealthy is to become a landlord.
and all idiots think Farage’s will fix it….. hahahaha
It does seem like the UK is rudderless now.
We were meant to be the center of banking and finance for Europe, but then Brext happened and well, there has been nothing since other than housing, retail and cottage industries. We can’t rely on that for ever.