I discovered an interesting economic indicator recently, the Skip Index. I have blogged before about one unusual way of judging how buoyant the local economy is, by counting cranes on the skyline (http://www.yourfbs.co.uk/what-does-economic-recovery-look-like/ ), now there is another method that doesn’t require a strained neck gazing upwards – counting skips on the road in your neighbourhood.

The principle is very simple; skips provide evidence of optimism and investment. A skip represents financial activity. This activity might be a new bathroom, a landscaped garden, a new driveway, or the installation of double glazing. The one thing these all have in common is evidence of disposable income being spent.

So, how many skips make an economic recovery? I guess that depends on the area you are looking at. It might be an area, a long road, or the whole village. Like cranes on the skyline of a city, skips come and go, but there presence is a sign of economic hope.

I wonder how many skips the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee see on their way to work…

Much is being said in the media these days about what economic recovery will look like. I suspect that life is too complicated to find generalised answers to this question, and that we are better looking at more specific areas.

One measurement of economic output I was told about many years ago was the “crane count”.

Very simply, how many cranes can you see on the skyline of your city?

Each crane represents an army of workers delivering a building project. Each one represents confidence in investment. There is no such thing (unless I’m much mistaken) as an idle crane.

How many cranes can you count, and are there more, less or about the same as this time last year?