You don’t need a map, satnav or signposts to drive a car from one place you know to another you don’t. But it helps. A guide is handy. It supports better choices. It saves time. So, too, can good industry statistics. You don’t need them. But a good set of numbers can help to scale your market and provide hints at where it’s heading. Even fairly ropey stats and indicators help. This brings me to the latest ONS release of…
The Office for National Statistics output figures released on Friday strongly suggest construction is heading for a technical recession. Put another way, recorded output will need major revisions or an exceptional boost in March if we are not to see two successive quarters of decline. The data suggest output in both January and February, when adjusted for inflation and seasonal factors, was lower than for any month since December 2013. On its current trajectory we are looking at a recorded…
The latest batch of construction industry forecasts out this week paint a brighter picture of growth for building in Britain, but a confused picture for prospects in the infrastructure sector. I’ll turn to the confusion later, but for now it’s safe to say that, taken as a whole, the forecasts reflect and seem to support the general improvement in confidence within construction. Despite recurring concerns over persisting fragility within the global economy, Europe in particular, the Construction Products Association (CPA)…
The latest official output data from the Office for National Statistics show growth apparently stalling in the second quarter. This may seem at odds with trade surveys and media commentary which tend to point to construction booming. It’s not really. Despite the zero growth recorded by ONS for output in the second quarter of this year, at the risk of doing a Michael Fish, I think we can be confident that the industry is pretty much set on an upward…
The latest set of construction forecasts from Experian, the Construction Products Association and Hewes all exude greater confidence than those released at the start of the year. There were few radical changes to the expected numbers above adjustments that would naturally be made to accommodate new data. But the sentiment is more encouraging, with concerns over downside risks easing. Indeed Experian suggest that the balance of risk within its forecast has probably shifted to the upside. The downside risks of…
Here’s a prime example of why it’s important to use a range of measures and timeframes rather than one single stat when using statistics as a tool to examine or describe whatever you’re interested in. The headline figures from the latest construction statistics say that construction grew in the final quarter of 2013 by 0.2%. This compares with the earlier estimated 0.3% fall released when the first estimate of GDP was published late last month. Looking simply at this changed…
Two more construction forecasts came out over the past week that added to the consensus that suggests construction is set for strong growth up to the General Election. Indeed, with the exception of the Hewes forecast, the view is that strong growth will continue well after 2015. The Hewes forecast tends to embrace more of the downside risks and in that respect charts a more cautious approach to potential growth. On that basis it seems reasonable to assume that it…
The annual turnover of the construction industry is about £1.5 billion bigger than we thought it was last month and it is growing much faster. That really is the big story from the latest estimate of construction output made by the Office for National Statistics. This is pretty big news. It means that the estimate for GDP will be boosted by about 0.1% as a result of the revisions to the construction output data. So we should expect to see…
The latest Markit/CIPS survey of construction activity came out yesterday grabbing big headlines and very possibly spectacularly misinforming the general public. The most common interpretation seems to be: “Construction grows at fastest rate for six years.” This is not surprising because it was what the Markit release actually said. I’m not saying this is bonkers, but it would surprise quite a few people if the official construction output figures record the fastest growth in six years in either the third…
I feel for pessimists in construction at the moment. It’s really tough times for doom mongers. Every survey is running high, some touting record-breaking numbers. Meanwhile, forecasters are suggesting we are on the threshold of a phase of growth well above the long-term average. My God. It’s boom time. How can you talk that down? Well okay let me have a go. Not because I’m a pessimist (despite the rumours). Things are looking better. And I take a simple view…