Insights from December’s Economic Nowcast
The Smart Data Foundry Economic Nowcast has been updated for December 2025, and shows that, at national level, there has been a slight decrease in the proportion of people spending more than their income and an increase in average weekly incomes.
The Nowcast provides regional breakdowns for England, Scotland and Wales and these show economic wellbeing trends across the three nations.
Our Nowcast is updated monthly and is designed to equip policymakers, analysts, and service providers with the timely insights necessary for proactive, data-informed decision-making.
By leveraging real-world, near real-time data, the Nowcast provides policymakers with a more accurate view of the current economic landscape. This complements official statistics and strengthens their ability to access the timely information required to respond to shifting economic challenges quickly and effectively.
Living beyond means
This indicator measures the proportion of people living beyond means (spending 120% of their income from salary, benefits, and pensions). This data was observed on 16th November 2025.
After decreasing 1.2% last month, the proportion of people spending 120% or more of their income has further decreased by 0.9% to 10.9%.
What is the regional picture?
Scotland had the smallest decrease in the proportion of people living beyond their means, while Wales had the largest shift and now has the lowest proportion of people whose income does not match their expenditure.
This indicator has decreased across Great Britain;
- For England this was down by 1.1% to 11.0%
- For Wales this was down by 1.3% to 10.2%
- For Scotland this was down by 0.1% to 10.6%
Average weekly income
This indicator measures average GB weekly income, based on a 13-week rolling average to 16th November 2025.
Average weekly incomes have continued to rise and have risen by 4.22% up to £340.72 per week (equating to £17,717.58 per year). Average incomes have now risen above August’s peak of £337 per week (£17,524 per year).
What is the regional picture?
People in Scotland have the highest average incomes, at £378.27 per week with England and Wales over £30 per week behind at £337.25 per week and £340.07 per week. Building on last month’s increase, all regions continued to increase;
- Scotland up 4.84% MoM
- England up 4.28% MoM
- Wales up 4.10% MoM
Small Business Productivity
This indicator comes from the Sage Q3 2025 Small Business Tracker, developed in collaboration with Smart Data Foundry and cebr. The Tracker analyses anonymised Sage Accounting and Payroll data from over 140,000 UK Small and Mid-sized Businesses (SMBs) and examines their performance in the current economic climate.
Productivity is defined as the revenue in real terms generated per employee. It has increased 0.38% to £11,070 since last quarter but has fallen by 4.6% year on year.
See the more from the report here.
About the data behind the Nowcast
Smart Data Foundry works with trusted data partners to responsibly share de-identified financial data for good. This data is used in research, policy making and public service delivery and supports decisions which improve economic wellbeing and reduce poverty and inequality.
The Economic Nowcast is underpinned by a dataset built on around 5 million consumer bank accounts and thousands of SMEs. This data is regularly shared by our data partners, prepared and aggregated by our data science team to produce the Nowcast indicators. Each indicator is updated either monthly (or quarterly for SMB performance) and allows users to compare with the previous month and quarter.
Learn more about the Nowcast, including our methodology, here.
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Financial data doesn't just reflect the economy, it is the economy. Every transaction, loan application and payment reveals something about the state of the UK economy.
We use this financial data to create our Nowcast, a near real-time economic pulse, with the potential to spot economic trends and changes months before official statistics catch up.
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