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Tag: recession

Construction output: So far it’s better than last year, but can that last?

Construction output: So far it’s better than last year, but can that last?

The construction firms may be suffering and may be shedding jobs, but the bald statistics so far for this year suggest that the industry is faring better than the gloomy news might have some believe. The latest construction output figures show that in pure cash terms the industry pocketed about £1.24 billion more in the first five months of this year than in the same period in 2010. And 2010 proved a pretty good year in the end, with output…

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Forecasters see pain deferred as recessions takes longer to bite in construction

Forecasters see pain deferred as recessions takes longer to bite in construction

The latest construction output forecast from the materials producers body Construction Products Association suggests pain deferred for the industry. The revised view is that this year will be less bad than the forecasters first thought, but next year will be worse and the recovery expected in 2013 will be weaker. The main thinking behind this gentle revision is that the fall off in public spending on construction is happening slower than was previously expected, having interpreted the Government spending plans….

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The Financial Times, Barbour ABI and construction prospects

The Financial Times, Barbour ABI and construction prospects

Did you see the FT piece with the Barbour ABI figures? What do you think? A bit worrying don’t you think? That set of questions in various guises came at me a few times yesterday as I was sipping a cappuccino in a sunlit Covent Garden cafe and while lunching on tapas with an old friend in Soho. My rare treat of an away day from numbers was not to be. Still. My initial reaction was: the figures may look scary, but…

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We need a thorough review of the construction figures new and old

We need a thorough review of the construction figures new and old

The latest release of construction output data underlines the critical importance of examining the accuracy and timing of the data, both the new series and the old. Calculations show that even slight variations to the current data can have a profound impact on the message the figures are sending to policy makers and business users. This is partly because of the high volatility in the construction market and the timing of the severe weather last winter, which brought much of…

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Panorama points to earnings pain, but the worst is yet to come

Panorama points to earnings pain, but the worst is yet to come

The Panorama programme due to be aired this evening is rightly getting a lot of publicity with figures showing that people’s earnings have fallen in “real” terms by about 5% during the past two years. But you really don’t need particularly detailed analysis to show how hard people’s earnings have been hit. As this blog has shown before, while pay has been hit hard in real terms, construction folk have taken a much heftier hit than most.  Using the RPIX…

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Bleak outlook for construction jobs as the downward trend continues

Bleak outlook for construction jobs as the downward trend continues

Construction job losses are starting once again to mount with a further 9,000 knocked of the number of workforce jobs in the final quarter of last year, as measured by the national statisticians. This means that at the end of 2010 there were about 2,128,000 construction jobs measured compared with 2,180,000 at the end of 2009 – a drop of just over 50,000. That takes the number of jobs lost from peak in September 2008 to 246,000, when numbers peaked…

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More inflation worries as plant hire prices bounce back

More inflation worries as plant hire prices bounce back

The latest data from the national statisticians ONS on services producer prices adds more concerns over rising inflation for contractors. The ONS’s services producer price indices provide data on price movements across a range of businesses, including plant hire, that provide services to other businesses. The recession in construction had driven plant hire prices down hard. But now it seems they are bouncing back as is clear from the graph below. Prices in the final quarter of 2010 were 2.2% up on…

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A bad time to bank on cutting costs to make up for cut-price bidding

A bad time to bank on cutting costs to make up for cut-price bidding

The latest pan-industry construction trade survey put together by the Construction Product Association paints a bleak picture for the months ahead, as falling workload and prices combine with cost inflation to squeeze firms’ already pressured profits. How ironic that seems after the industry enjoyed one of its best ever years of growth in 2010. But the trade survey suggests that profit margins have been under significant pressure since the credit crunch in the autumn of 2007. And it would seem…

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2010 saw fastest growth since the 1980s boom – but we are on the way down again

2010 saw fastest growth since the 1980s boom – but we are on the way down again

The impact of the economic stimulus on construction is clear when we look at the phenomenal growth the industry enjoyed in 2010. The latest set of construction output figures put volume growth for 2010 at about 6.2%, although the amount of cash pocketed by the industry rose by just 3.8% as a result of falling prices. In volume terms this represents the biggest annual jump in output recorded since the late 1980s boom. And by the time the statisticians at…

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