The good, the bad and the ugly to be found in the latest construction data
This month’s Office for National Statistics construction output figures have provided a conundrum for commentators. Are they good or are they bad?
Latest new orders figures cast a long dark shadow over construction
The construction new orders figures released by the Office for National Statistics on Friday suggest a truly scary year or more for the UK industry. We can find some solace in the general rule that it is unwise to take as your guide just one measure of activity in construction, given the trickiness of measuring the industry’s activity. There are much less worrisome measures of construction activity to be found. But let’s consider what conclusions we might draw if we…
Collapsing construction workloads push plant hire prices down to nine-year low
The worrying state of the construction industry is becoming increasingly evident outside those figures that show sharp falls in output, continuously weak orders and job losses. The latest Services Producer Price Indicies makes for very gloomy reading for the plant hire industry.
North East aches while London sees growth in construction jobs
Here is a chart that pretty much speaks for itself. It shows the regional change in the level of construction workforce jobs across the UK from before the recession to the summer of this year. Yesterday I looked at the trends in construction employment (a subtly different measure, but broadly similar) and the likely path of job creation/losses. I thought today I might dig into the ONS data and extract numbers for the regions. So I have taken an average of…
Why job shedding in the UK construction industry may be about to accelerate
UK construction industry employed about 57,000 fewer people in the third quarter of this year than a year earlier. That’s a drop of about 2.6%. The ONS data shows that since the peak in September 2007 the fall in the number employed is closer to 380,000. This represents broadly a 15% drop in the workforce. It’s worth noting that these figures are subject to a lot of statistical noise so a few thousand here or there is pretty meaningless. Furthermore…
The extra magic money brings when you get your bank to print it and use it to buy your debt
An exchange of letters between Mervyn King at the Bank of England and George Osborne at the Treasury is causing a bit of excitement among economists and also among in-the-know construction folk. They see a chink of light in the black cloud that is Government capital spending intentions, as the Treasury gets a cash boost of some £20 billion, £30 billion maybe more from the excess cash in the Quantitative Easing pot. It’s an accounting trick that’s raising more than a…
UK construction bosses need to make Government face the facts: The industry is in freefall
Construction output fell 2.6% in the third quarter of this year. This fall was slightly more than had been expected when the nation’s first estimate of gross domestic product was released. For informed industry watchers this was no surprise. The fact that revisions by the Office for National Statistics to earlier data pushed the recorded level of output down still further was also not a surprise.
The bad news keeps rolling in for construction
The good news may be rolling in from where the Prime Minister is standing but for construction folk the news just gets bleaker.
Construction firms are shedding jobs as they head for a long dark winter, says buyers’ chief
Today’s construction indicator released today by Markit/CIPS suggests construction firms performed slightly better in October than in September. The index, which is pegged against a no change mark of 50, was at recorded as 50.9 in October, up from 49.5 in September. But in reality this indicator tends for whatever reasons to run a bit hot, judging by past performance. So a score of 50.9 probably should be seen as negative rather than positive. Interestingly if we plot the Markit/CIPS…
What is the optimism in the latest RICS construction survey telling us?
The latest survey of the construction market by the surveyors’ body RICS provides on first reading some confusion, showing optimism rising sharply while workloads fall. The survey has produced a mildly negative balance for surveyors’ workloads. Yet it also showed expectations of improvement in workload, employment and profit at levels not seen since the recession. Curious. What lies behind this surge in optimism among surveyors? Are we seeing green shoots?