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.
It has become noticeable of late that construction consultants seem significantly more optimistic than their fellows in UK contracting firms. Consultants may be a wee bit uneasy, but contractors it must be said seem to be wading in a slough of despond. The topic of restructuring (for which we read cutting jobs) is back on the agenda. I’ve suggested as one possible explanation for this disparity in happiness that consultants might be winning more work abroad and so partially relieving the pain of…
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…
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…
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 good news may be rolling in from where the Prime Minister is standing but for construction folk the news just gets bleaker.
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…
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?
The National Housing Federation launched its 2012 Home Truths report today. It’s got lots of coverage, probably because it says again what many already know – there’s a housing crisis and it will put even more pressure on the already stressed and strained housing benefit system. We spend more than £20 billion a year on housing benefit in a bid to keep the poorest out of housing squalor. But thousands more working folk are turning to this benefit as rents…
The recession in construction will be longer and deeper than we thought three months ago. That is the message in the latest set of industry forecasts emerging this month. This may evoke a sense of déjà vu. Each quarter of late the forecasts have darkened. The latest set look pretty bleak as we can see from the graph.