Contractors won 61% less in commercial sector construction orders in cash terms in the 12 months to November last year than they did in 12 months to the end of 2007. Here is a graph of orders won for all types of new work on a 12-month rolling basis. The graph shows the volume of work at 2005 constant prices and the value in cash terms. Roughly speaking, as the graph shows, construction firms are winning about a third less work now…
The latest forecast from the Construction Products Association suggests that the drop in future workload will not be as large as the forecasters had previously thought. The graph opposite compares the past three Construction Products Association forecasts. It clearly shows that with each progressive quarterly forecast the expected hole in construction workload has shrunk. Fantastic news you might think. Well think again. If you’re a contractor this is probably bad news not good news. And here’s why.
When we suffered a cold snap back in February last year I looked at the impact of the great freeze of 1962/63 on construction output. In a word it was huge. So, as I walked into work this morning chipper as a child as I trudge though inches of snow and took in the Christmas card scene, I wondered what was the effect of the cold snap in February on the figures and what might we expect the impact of…
The buyers’ body CIPS has released its first construction statistics of the New Year and they show the industry continuing to decline in December. The construction index finished the year on 47.1, below the 50 no-change mark for the 22nd consecutive month. But there was some good news. The housing index remained positive for the fourth month running and growth appears to be strengthening. Meanwhile optimism among purchasing managers about future activity rose slightly. But as the graph shows the…
It has long been said that construction is an important bellwether in determining the shape of the nation’s economic progress. Today the performance of construction, or rather revisions to its measured performance, seemingly determined how close the UK is to recovery. The upwardly revised construction data put the nation yet closer to its official exit from recession. Whether we are in or out of recession has huge political significance. But for me it is interesting to note just how much store is…
The official figures show construction lost 67,000 jobs in the third quarter of this year. This is more than 1,000 jobs each working day and half the jobs lost to the UK economy over that period. So while there may be suggestions of more stability in the wider economy, construction is clearly still mired in a growing recession.
Few would argue against the view that this set of Pre-Budget Report announcements has more to do with pre-electioneering that pre-budgeting. That’s fair enough. The Labour Party may not be in power to pursue its plans and, if it is after the next election, we don’t know how keen it will be to stick to them given a further five years to play with. The political desire to put the pain at the start rather than the end of a…
Practically all construction statistics are poor by comparison to the data in most other industries. It is not a fault of the statisticians or researchers. They have an unenviable job as the construction industry is, relatively speaking, very tricky to measure. So the best way to make sense of what is really going on it to look at a wide range of information and see what matches and what clashes and glean information wherever you can. Valuable insight into the…
So its official – the construction recession isn’t as bad as we thought. And the even better news is that the sharp fall in output at the start of this year wasn’t anywhere near as sharp as last quarter’s figures had suggested. That at least is how the national statisticians might have us see it. The official figures for construction workload show a jump of 2% between the second and third quarters of this year. Workloads were boosted, the figures…
The official employment figures released today show that the construction industry has lost just 40,000 jobs. That clearly is rubbish. Were the figures accurate and were the construction output figures accurate it would suggest that as the industry has plunged into recession overall labour productivity for the construction sector has fallen by about 16%. OK there may be a bit of a lag effect, but ultimately the output is in large part down to the people doing it, so I’d…