The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), Britain's fiscal watchdog, published a new table on 28 October showing output per worker (the value of what each worker produces, the usual measure of productivity) accelerating in several services that rank high for AI exposure1. In information and communication, output per worker grew 7.6% a year between late 2024 and mid-2026, against 1.3% a year between early 2022 and late 2024. At 7.6% a year output per worker doubles in under ten years; at 1.3% it would take more than fifty. In professional, scientific and technical services it rose to 3.7% from -0.8%, while finance and insurance, also exposed to AI, slowed to 0.3%.
Those are the services the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed adding jobs while advertising fewer of them, and UK vacancies kept falling in July to September, according to ONS figures published in October. Faster output and fewer advertised posts fit firms meeting demand with tools in place of hires, but the OBR does not claim that. Accommodation and food, hardly an AI sector, also sped up, to 3.2%, and the OBR keeps AI's boost to UK productivity at 0.2 percentage points a year in its central forecast.
Only 30% of UK businesses used any AI technology in September, up from 15% two years earlier, the OBR says. For the public finances, productivity growth 0.5 points a year faster would cut 2030-31 borrowing by about £50bn, and 0.5 points slower would add about £40bn. The OBR built the table from administrative records (data the state already holds) because, it says, limits in the Labour Force Survey make sector trends hard to read; the ONS has pushed its replacement survey beyond November 2027.
