logistics and retail updates
This series of updates aims to bring relevant government and industry statistics to life. As part of our assignments, we often help clients source both internal and external data, and then use it to drive logistics modelling, benchmarking, budgeting ...and action plans! To find out how we can help you by ringing 01295 758875 or contact us. If you'd like an alert when a fresh update is posted, ask us to email you or follow on Twitter:
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Latest update - 3 May 2013: Better late than never!
Substantially fewer days were lost to strikes and disputes the last year according to figures published by the Office for National Statistics recently - 231K in the year to February 2013 versus 1.4m in the previous year. The previous figure was due to the large public sector strikes, and it can be seen on the graph below that it is still the public sector where most days have been lost.
There are some industries where no days were recorded as lost in either year (Agriculture, forestry and fishing; Mining and quarrying; Electricity, gas and air conditioning) and these are NOT included on the graph. A number of sectors that are included on the graph (Wholesale and retail trade and repairs; Accomodation and food service activities; Real estate activities) recorded no days lost in the most recent year.
For those working in logistics, worried about the increase in Transport and storage, this is also down to the public sector, with the pre-Olympic public transport strikes accounting for most, and possibly even all, of the days lost.
What's the relevance of the title? I meant to publish this on May Day, International Workers Day, but just ran out of time!
17 April 2013: Turkey - why Mum's gone to Iceland!
Yesterday, my attention was drawn to labour statistics by a tweet - the link it included to OECD led to an interesting graph showing just how much Europe is the poor relation in the developed world with respect to employment rates, and continuing to decline.
The tweet also commented on women's employment rate versus that of men for Q4 2012 for the OECD as a whole. Calculating female employment rate as a percentage of the male employment rate, the country with the highest proportion of women in employment is Iceland at 97.5% (79% of women aged 15-64 were employed compared with 81% of men). The UK has 87.1%, which is a larger percentage than the EU as a whole at 84.3%.
Not all countries are included in the data, but one stands out on the map below - Turkey is the only country with less than half the proportion of women to men in employment (42.5% = 30% of women employed compared with 70% of men).
To make this map BIGGER, please click on the map itself and then expand new window.
1 April 2013: What's driving the current logistics boom?
It's a long time since anyone has talked about a logistics boom in anywhere other than India and China. One of the more palatable aspects of the recent meat adulteration scandal has been that it has brought growing public awareness of the efficiency of modern supply chains. The ability of the logistics network to move this product from country to country, while enabling food retailers to keep the cost to consumers so low, is remarkable.
As this article in the Irish Examiner revealed about 10 days ago, the various nations involved have been willing to share expertise with their European partners at every opportunity. The complexity of the network that enables this operation, spanning the various modes of transport, is shown on the map below. While this trade continues, logistics providers across Europe can continue to reap rewards.
To make this map BIGGER, please click on the map itself and then expand new window.
I should probably have titled this one: Only Fools and Horses.
17 March 2013: I'm dreaming of a white (van) Christmas
Well, some things are looking up, and some things are looking down - light goods vehicles and heavy ones to be precise. Late last week the statistics on new registrations in January were published by the Department for Transport. Although the two lines on the graph below may appear to start and end at the same points, the scales on the two different axes are quite different, with something like six times as many light goods vehicles as heavy.
It's something of a surprise that the statistics for light goods vehicles aren't worse than they are, given news such as that of Mike Benson writing to Mervyn King in desperation when he couldn't get a loan to buy a new van for his business.
But the interesting news is that of HGV registrations continuing to be on a downward trend - transport has traditionally been regarded as a leading indicator, although that may not be so strongly the case now as it was once upon a time - see update archive dated 13 April 2012 (about a third down page). You can also find a description of the erratic changes in HGV registrations - see update archive dated 15 March 2011 (about two thirds down page).
To make this graph BIGGER, please click on the graph itself and then expand new window.
8 March 2013: EU retail sales mystify
Earlier this week Eurostat published its figures on volume of retail trade. The graph below shows the percentage change compared with the same month of the previous year for the six months ending January 2013.
I have plotted some specific countries along with the overall figures for the EU27 and the categories "Food, drinks, tobacco" and "Non-food products (except automotive fuel)" - the latter includes mail order & internet, along with clothing & footwear, electricals & furniture, computer equipment and pharmaceuticals, although there is no breakdown to this level for January.
I remain mystified as to what is resulting in an overall figure as high as -0.9% for EU27 in January, as the figure for automotive fuel in specialised stores (not included on the graph) is -1.8% (ie all major areas of expenditure reported on in January are at least -1.5%).
NB These figures are adjusted for working days. The reason there is no January figure for Greece on the graph is that it is regarded as confidential (as are all retail volume figures for the whole period for Italy and Spain!).
To make this graph BIGGER, please click on the graph itself and then expand new window.
20 February 2013: Not all at sea?
Earlier today the Office for National Statistics published the latest SPPI figures. It can be seen in the graph below that road freight rates continue to increase, but to nothing like the extent that seafreight rates have decreased over the past year.
However, that small increase in road freight rates has a greater influence on overall business inflation than the much larger difference in sea freight rates. Road has a weighting worth more than 8 times that of sea within the SPPI gross sector index - this includes services to other service businesses as well as to non-service businesses and government departments. At net level (so, only including services to non-service businesses and government departments) road freight has a weighting of nearly 14 times that of sea.
The Service Producers Price Index is a bit like the CPI, but for services provided by businesses. It is a quarterly index, with the most recent figures for Q4 - it is not seasonally adjusted.
To make this graph BIGGER, please click on the graph itself and then expand new window.
8 February 2013: Does Europe matter?
Yesterday the Office for National Statistics published the latest UK Trade figures for December 2012, including details of the top 10 countries to/from which the UK exports and imports.
In the graph below, I have combined this with the same data from last year. The pinky-purple colours represent non-EU countries and the rest, all the blues, greens and yellows, represent EU countries. The unit is £m. It can be seen that while the US may be our single largest export market, our EU partners represent a larger overall market, with China as the only other non-EU country in the top 10. On the supply side, Germany is our biggest source of imports, followed by Netherlands, with US and China in third and fourth place respectively.
Our export markets have retained exactly the same order of play as a year ago, but there has been movement within the top 10 on the import side, with Netherlands, France and Spain all gaining in significance, and China and Norway, along with ROI, moving down the list. I probably don't need to ask whether you think Europe matters to the UK.
To make this graph BIGGER, please click on the graph itself and then expand new window.
25 January 2013: Vacancies in retail and logistics
With news today that the economy shrank in the last 3 months of 2012 and, earlier in the week, that the number of people in work has reached record levels, what's the situation if you're trying to recruit staff? When the Office for National Statistics published the employment figures in the latest release of Labour Market Statistics, it also published data on the number of vacancies - nearly half a million in total in the final quarter of 2012, including 20K in Transport & Storage and 74K in retail - the latter the largest number of vacancies in a single sector.
The graph below shows how the number of vacancies has flexed over the last five years, both in total and in some selected key sectors - the original data has been brought back to a value of 100 for Q4 2007 to make the changed impact of the recession on different industries directly comparable. The notes that accompany this data indicate that it's not seasonally adjusted, BUT that these figures don't display seasonality, which I found thought-provoking ...so I only plotted the Q4 figures for each year, again to ensure comparability.
Also published in Labour Market Statistics was data on vacancy rates - vacancies per 100 employees. The average across all sectors was 1.9 in Q4, with Transport & Storage below that at 1.6, and Retail higher at 2.6 - is this an effect of part-time jobs?
To make this graph BIGGER, please click on the graph itself and then expand new window.
31 December 2012: Looking forward
The close of one year and the start of the next is a good time to look forward. In its Economic Outlook No 92, the OECD gave forecasts to 2014 for its Competitiveness indicator, the CPIDR, which I learn is intended to represent a real exchange rate based on consumer price inflation. The graph below plots the data from 2005, the base year for the indicator, through to the 2014 projection.
Unless someone tells me differently, I'm reading that a low projection equals "more competitive than in 2005". I haven't included all countries in the original OECD data, but have selected some likely to be of interest. Some of the BRIC countries feature at the top of the graph - while they will still have competitive pricing, presumably they are less competitive than back in 2005. The UK has the third lowest forecast after two other countries - Iceland, the lowest of those countries included in the data and which is included on the graph, and Korea. Presumably the UK's position is as a result of quantatitive easing.
To make this graph BIGGER, please click on the graph itself and then expand new window.
The OECD site can be accessed via this link.
22 December 2012: Stellar sales performance
Late last week the ONS released the latest retail figures including internet sales - the graph below could be regarded as the most boring graph in the world (12 month moving average of the percent of retail sales via internet), as online retailing just continues to grow and grow, so I've tried to brighten it up with some traditional references. Please note: the position of the star should in no way be taken to be my prediction for the December figure.
To make this graph BIGGER, please click on the graph itself and then expand new window.
9 December 2012: Cutting back - houses and holidays
The news last week, based on figures released by the Office for National Statistics, was that UK households spent an average of £484 a week in 2011, with shock-horror examples of change being that spending on car insurance is now a third more than that on fresh fruit and vegetables. The graph below is based on those figures and shows household spending by category per week from 2006 through to 2011, with all prices at 2011 levels.
People who know me well, know that I hate categorisation of anything where "Other" ends up being the largest slice of the pie, I always feel the point has somehow been missed, particularly when there's also a separate, and not inconsiderable, category of "Miscellaneous"!
However, in this case, "Other" really is misleading, as mortgage interest payments and council tax are in this category, along with holiday spending. This reduction is a combination of low interest rates along with cutting back on some of the things that, for many people, make life worthwhile.
To make this graph BIGGER, please click on the graph itself and then expand new window.
You can find more information on family spending at the ONS site.
21 November 2012: Courier rates remain depressed
Earlier today the Office for National Statistics released the latest SPPI figures, showing that inflation in Road Freight rates continues to track above that for general business services, while rates for Courier Services are less than five years ago. These figures may well not reflect your own experience, so how are they compiled?
The survey for Road Freight collects contract prices for seven product categories, of which the largest contributor is general haulage representing 47.7% of this element of the index and the second largest UK warehousing and distribution at 23.7%. Other categories include: Agriculture & Livestock, International Haulage, Tankers, Temperature Controlled Transport and Tipping & Construction.
The survey for Courier Services collects prices for nine product categories, of which the largest is UK next day representing 54.6% of this element of the index and the second largest UK same day at 19.5%. Other categories include rates for deliveries to other EC countries and to other parts of the world, and for different services.
To make this graph BIGGER, please click on the graph itself and then expand new window.
The Service Producers Price Index is a bit like the CPI only for services provided by businesses to other businesses and government - the top level Gross / GSO index as shown on the graph includes the provision of a number of different services to other service businesses as well as to non-service businesses and government departments. It is a quarterly index, so the most recent figures are for Q3, and it is not seasonally adjusted.
The ONS data no longer includes pre-recession information, and so this graph includes statistics merged from previous downloads to give a longer perspective.
2 November 2012: If you can't monitor it, you can't manage it!
Earlier this week saw the publication of Lord Heseltine's report No Stone Unturned (with its very unusual cartoon cover!), which included his "proposals ...designed to help all regions innovate, grow and increase their absolute wealth".
At the same time, the Office for National Statistics released its Region and Country Profiles - Key Statistics - October 2012, including statistics that presumably might have been of interest to Lord Heseltine, as this included data for business births and deaths by region. There are a couple of interesting points. The first, which you can see by looking at the graph below, is that business deaths were greater than business births in all cases, including in the capital. The second, is that this data is for 2010 - surely in the 21st century we can update and access information, that is crucial to understanding and managing the economy, quicker than this?
As one of my colleagues at Marks & Spencer used to say: If you can't monitor it, you can't manage it.
To make this graph BIGGER, please click on the graph itself and then expand new window.
15 October 2012: How long are you going to be depressed?
Last week the National Institute of Economic and Social Research published its latest GDP estimates. Overall these are reported as suggesting that output grew by 0.8 per cent in the three months ending in September, resulting in the most robust rate of growth since the three months to July 2010 - although it's also noted in NIESR's latest release that the strength of the figure for the three months to September is largely the result of one-off special events, including the reversal of effects from last year, and that growth is expected to be at a slower pace going forward. NIESR does not expect output to pass its peak in early 2008 until 2014.
The NIESR also published monthly estimates of output by sector. As the graph below shows, the recession / depression has a very different pattern depending on the sector in which you operate, with Private Services reflecting the same pattern as GDP overall, but construction and agriculture following different paths.
To make this map BIGGER, please click on the map itself and then expand new window.
NB GDP(B) is calculated at prices excluding taxes and subsidies.
4 October 2012: The decline of the working wo/man?
Population projections for England for 2021 were published late last week by ONS. These interim figures, which take the 2011 census into account, envisage an 8.6% growth in population over ten years. But, as can been seen from the map below, this change is almost entirely due to the under-16s and over-65s, with London the only place that stands out from the crowd.
We hear a lot about changing demographics, but ought we to start to use different age brackets to understand what is happening? With youngsters increasingly encouraged to go into further education, to what extent does this erode the number of people of working age? While, at the other end of the spectrum, people are starting to retire later, again distorting the picture presented. It is particularly important to understand what is happening in areas such as the North West and North East where the numbers of 16-64s are projected to drop.
To make this map BIGGER, please click on the map itself and then expand new window.
You can also see how natural change and both internal and international migration affect these figures on the ONS website. These statistics are reproduced under the Open Government Licence. NB The areas shown on the map are for illustration only and may not accurately reflect the government regions.
If you'd like to see older updates on a wide variety of subjects, please visit this link for archive updates.