UK Automotive Industry
Like all industries, the UK automotive sector has been negatively affected by the global pandemic. While a disruption to a highly efficient supply chain is damaging in itself, in some cases the coronavirus has accelerated underlying negative trends that were previously observed. Intuitively, one would assume that unemployment and new passenger cars registered would be inversely correlated, and this was the case in the UK for many years. Yet the blue line in the chart indicating the rolling annual sum of car registrations has been on the decline since 2017, and has done a dramatic cliff-dive in recent months. This divergence between unemployment and new vehicle registrations suggests a change in consumption patterns that may accelerate even further after the pandemic.
