Chapter II. The Home Economy

The problem of forming a reasonably firm view of developments so far this year in real output and demand has become no easier to solve during the three months since we last reported. In addition to registering the distorting effects of the miners' strike in the first quarter and the American dock strike late last year, the three measures of GDP most recently published for the first half of 1972 are showing a wider discrepancy amongst themselves than at any time in at least the last eleven years. For the third quarter as well, two of the indicators which we normally use in making our estimates of the national accounts aggregates in the most recent period—the trade figures and the index of industrial production—have both been affected (the trade figures especially) by strikes, in the docks and in the building industry. Finally, with the publication of the 1972 Blue Book have come revisions to the data which were available in August—affecting in particular the preceding four quarters.