For the past five years this blog has been perceived as a purveyor of doom and gloom and sometimes criticised for being so. I part jokingly retort that I may be gloomy, but I tend to be out-gloomed by reality. Here’s my take in 2008. There is plenty of scope I see now to have been gloomier than I was and not have been unreasonable as things have panned out. But this post does not concern who was right or…
Yes folks the construction industry is partying like it was 1999. Sounds like fun, but sadly it means that all the growth achieved this century has been wiped out. And while we metaphorically vomit into the punch bowl, here’s a thought to sober us up. If it wasn’t for rich foreign and indeed rich British investors pumping cash into London residential property the construction industry would probably be closing in on a drop of nearer to a quarter from peak…
The GDP data provided the Chancellor George Osborne with solace. The 0.3% quarterly rise allowed him to suggest the figures provided evidence that the economy is healing. Had the figures shown a decline he would have been fending off a huge amount of flak. That’s politics. But the figures mean little in the grand scheme of things unless they work some magic on the animal spirits within the economy. The economy is probably rising very gently, but far too slowly…
The main industry forecasters have revised up their expectations for the future path of construction output. The revisions from the previous forecast three months or so ago suggest there will be an extra one billion or so pounds worth of work flowing into construction this year than previously expected. Part of this is statistical, as the latest Office for National Statistics data puts the fall in 2012 at less than first thought. But, even so, the forecasters have slightly shaded…
It’s hard not to get caught up in the silly guessing game over whether the nation will tumble into a triple-dip recession or not. Yes it is totemic. But actually measuring growth to an accuracy of 0.1% is pretty tricky and revisions over time can eliminate or even reverse growth rates. The reality is that growth is very weak, if there is any, at the moment and that is horrible, especially for construction where its growth requires at least modest…
The graph probably says it all. The construction output figures are looking very disturbing. This will not come as a surprise to many, but the confirmation of fears provides little solace. Yes we can blame the weather. Yes we can note that the figures bounce about a lot. Yes we can find comfort in the possibility of revisions. But as they stand and as far as you can make out from the historic data the figures suggest that construction probably…
There’s constant talk of this growth policy and that growth policy centred on construction. Big-looking numbers are bandied about. Then not a lot happens. Perhaps that’s just politics in the modern media age where it is assumed that the memory of past policies is overwritten by the latest. Cynicism aside, while the flim flam and bluster of politics is a barrier to getting useful things done, more worrying to me is a seeming lack of understanding of scale. Put simply…
Here’s an intriguing puzzle. Why would an alternative measure of construction activity suggest the industry is about 13% bigger than the official construction output figures show? Also, why would this measure of the annual increase in capital goods resulting from construction (gross fixed capital formation) suggest the industry has fallen 20% from peak rather than the 10% the construction output figures suggest? This has been bugging me for some time and some months ago I turned to the Office for…
The latest monthly construction output figures from the ONS for January provide little to surprise those who have been following their progress of late. They remain horribly worrying. The figures show construction output in January adjusted for inflation down 6.3% on December and 7.9% down on January 2012. Given there is no seasonal adjustment, it is best to measure output adjusted for inflation on a 12-month-rolling basis. On this measure output continues to slide with the annual size of the…
The latest construction new orders figures will give some solace to some. The need to see growth, any growth, in any construction indicator is desperate. The top graph shows clearly how new orders for construction have fallen over the past few years and how frighteningly low the level remains. I remain a shade concerned over the accuracy of this data series just because it does look so terrible and the implications the figures have for construction output – that which…