Agents' Summary of Business Conditions - August 2009

• Consumer spending had continued to stabilise.
• The recovery in housing market activity had continued.
• Investment intentions remained depressed, driven primarily by the weak and uncertain outlook for demand.
• There had been little change to the pace of contraction in export volumes.
• There were further, widespread reports that the pace of de-stocking had slowed.
• There was more evidence that manufacturing output was stabilising. Recent reports from business services providers had been more mixed. And construction activity remained severely depressed.
• Employment intentions were less negative than earlier in the year — while many firms expected to reduce head count further, there were fewer plans for large scale redundancies
• Per capita labour costs remained lower than the same period a year earlier, while inflation in materials costs had eased further.
• There was little evidence of inflation in manufactured output prices. And many business services prices were lower than a year earlier.
• Consumer goods price inflation remained low but positive. 

Agents' summary of business conditions - August 2009

• Agents' scores (xlsx)
• Definitions for the Agents’ scores
• Response to consultation on changes to Agents' scores