Construction output slumped back into decline in the final quarter of 2009, after a supposed rise out of recession in summer. That is the headline story from today’s release of the construction output figures. But dig a bit deeper and we see some unsettling implications in the numbers.
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…