Economic climate and crime
According to the most recent estimates, the gross domestic product of Greater Manchester was around 82.66 billion British pounds in 2021, compared with 75.1 billion pounds in 2020. The economy of Manchester was estimated to have shrank by 11.3 percent during the course of 2020, an economic decline mirrored across the UK, and a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic. More recent figures show that GDP grew by ten percent in 2021, while the unemployment rate stood at 4.4 percent in 2023.Like other major cities in England, Manchester also has a higher crime rate than the countrywide average. As of the 2022/23 reporting year, there were 369,853 crime offences recorded by Greater Manchester Police, which translated to a crime rate of 128.9 per 1,000 people, compared with 93.9 for England and Wales. The city was also recently the target of terrorists, and suffered the UK's fourth-worst terrorist attack on May 22, 2017, when 22 people were killed by a suicide bomber as they left a concert at Manchester Arena.
