The British economy officially entered a recession in the fourth quarter, according to data released Friday. In Spain, half a million more people lost their jobs, pushing the unemployment rate there to the highest in more than eight years.

British gross domestic product fell 1.5 percent from the third quarter and was down 1.8 percent on a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics said Friday in a preliminary estimate. Economists had predicted a 1.2 percent quarterly drop. All sectors except agriculture contracted.

The numbers confirmed what economists and consumers have known for some time: that the economy is in a recession, traditionally defined as two consecutive quarterly declines in G.D.P. The rate fell 0.6 percent in the third quarter.

For the whole of 2008, G.D.P. rose 0.7 percent, the lowest rate since 1992, when it rose 0.1 percent. The faster decline in output touched both services and manufacturing; all sectors except agriculture contracted in the quarter.