A survey says UK factories grew faster in October. Will official figures agree?
A monthly survey of UK factory managers rose to 52.8 in October, a five-month high. Official output figures for October come out on 11 December.
What happened
The index rose to 52.8 in October, up from 51.9 in September and in line with estimates.
A survey of UK factory managers rose to 52.8 in October. The survey, the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) run by the data firm S&P Global, was 51.9 in September. A reading above 50 means factories are growing, and this was the highest in five months. Output and new orders both grew faster, with new work from China, the EU and the US, but hiring stopped after six months of growth.
Costs are rising fast. S&P Global said the prices factories pay for materials rose at one of the fastest rates in four years, as fuel, energy and transport got dearer. Brent crude oil cost about $124 a barrel on average in the first four weeks of October, against about $65 in .
The survey asks managers how business is going. The official figure counts what factories make. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said factory output rose 1.2% in August, and medicines gave over half of that rise. The ONS publishes September’s figure on and October’s on at 7am, on the same morning as its monthly growth figure for the whole economy.
Monthly production in saw increases from “manufacturing” (up by 1.2%), “mining and quarrying” (up by 1.4%) and “electricity and gas” (up by 0.1%).
Office for National Statistics, Index of Production, UK:
Sources: The Guardian, US EIA (2), ONS (2, 3)
The Pattern
We looked for cases where the UK factory survey was above 50 and higher than the month before, while oil cost at least 30% more than one and two years earlier. The survey also had to be above 50 for the two months before and higher than in each of the four months before. We found five such months since 2000, and two of them came in the same oil price jump in 2026.
Show the other 3 cases
The Read
Output rose in three of the five months. In October the survey’s own measure of output grew at its fastest pace in 25 months, S&P Global said, faster than the five-month high of the main number. In the three months that rose, official output grew by 0.1% to 0.4%. In all five months it moved by less than 1% either way, while July and rose 1.0% and 1.2%. Weekly prices put oil in October about 9% above September, and metal makers had already cut output by 2.7% in the three months to August.
There are reasons for doubt. All five months are from the UK, and April and came in the same oil price jump. In the first official figure is not online, so the fall comes from today’s figures. The ONS also changes past months: first showed a 0.1% rise and now shows a 0.6% fall. In , when oil was also far dearer and the survey rose, output fell 2.3%. In the 21 such months that could be checked since 1992, output rose in 11. Since the ONS has also used tax data from firms, so the figures for 2000 and 2004 were made in a different way.
Sources: S&P Global, The Guardian (2), ONS (2, 3, 4), US EIA (2)
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