For many economists and commentators the employment data released today by the Office for National Statistics were better than expected. The figures hint at a few more people employed and a few fewer unemployed people across the economy, if we look at the seasonally adjusted data. But compared with a year ago the number of people employed is pretty much the same, given the potential for errors inevitable in such data.
The Office for National Statistics confirmed its preliminary estimate that construction was again in technical recession. Indeed its latest estimate is that construction fell further in the first quarter of this year, dropping by 4.8% rather than the 3% it estimated for the GDP figures released late last month. Not too much should be read into the revision. The scope for revisions up and down was great as the initial stab was based on limited data. It was also unclear…
Today’s GDP figures will come as unwelcome news to the Government. The data suggest the UK again is in a technical recession, falling by an unexpected 0.2% in the first quarter. A large factor in this decline in growth was down to construction. The GDP data for construction suggest the industry saw a 3% decline in the first quarter of this year. This follows a fall of 0.2% in the final quarter of last year and technically puts construction into…
There’s very often a paradoxical upside to bad news, as I’m sure the Taoists among us will readily accept. It will be disturbing news if the next set of stats show that measured construction output collapsed in the first of this year. But, weird as it may seem, that might just provide a fillip for real action to support an industry that gets more political attention than it does sensible assistance. Let’s start the story from the growing media attention…
I will be shocked if construction is not in a technical recession when the first quarter figures are published in a month’s time. That is providing the official construction output data for Great Britain released today is not fantastically revised. What is more we should expect to see bigger contractors squealing the most, as it is the markets they dominate that seem to be under most pressure. I have done a few back-of-an-envelope calculations and (unless I am very much out of…
Much fuss is made over the monthly ups and downs of housing price indicators. But in reality those released recently suggest the average UK house price remains more or less locked at the steady altitude it has followed for more than a year. Taking a consensus from the plethora of available measures suggests an average home costs you today within 1% (probably 1% less) of what it would have cost a year ago and more or less the same as…
I and others have long held doubts about accuracy of the private housing repair and maintenance series within the construction output data. And if there is a fault with the data series it is important that it be addressed if policy makers, analysts and academics are not to draw wrong inferences from it.
Today’s construction output figures are a bit of a mixed bag suggesting things are getting worse, but that they were not as bad as we thought they were. The headline figure is that output over the three months to October was down by 1.1% compared with a year ago. And, as is clear from the graph, on the basis of the latest figures the industry does appear to be subsiding into recession. The graph shows the monthly progression of the…
On the face of it the Homes and Communities Agency statistics for affordable housing starts are absolutely awful. I’m going to go out on a limb and accept that they look significantly worse as a snapshot of what is going on than the reality on the ground. The data suggest that the starts are back-end loaded within the financial year, so a drop in this half of the year would have been expected. Obviously this drop was greatly exaggerated by…
Expect another row to erupt over the latest set of revisions to the construction output figures. If we accept the latest data, the suggestion now is that construction output in 2011 will be up by about 3% on its 2010 level, in the absence of a catastrophic collapse in the final three months of the year. The revisions added about 1% to official construction output in the first half of 2011. The most notable revision is to growth in output…