History. No count from the five quick estimates: in all of them the yearly figure of the quarter before was below zero, and now it is above zero on the payroll measure (+0.7%), so the pattern does not carry over.
Hunch. The economy grew 0.7% in the three months to August, the ONS said on 15 October, while the weak 0.2% quarter of a year earlier drops out of the yearly comparison.
The pick-up market resolves on the same ONS bulletin: YES if yearly growth in output per hour for July to September is higher than the figure for April to June printed in that same release, both on the main measure the ONS names first in the Main points, NO if it is lower, and void if the two are equal to one decimal place. The same rules for a moved release apply, and BBC News and The Guardian settle it if the ONS page is down.
We looked for cases where the ONS published its quick estimate of output per hour after the quarter before had shown a fall over the quarter and slower yearly growth, in the years after the financial crisis and the pandemic. We found five such quick estimates, from 2022 to 2026, out of 42 published for quarters since late 2015. In four of them output per hour was higher than a year earlier, and in August 2022 it was 1.0% lower, because hours worked grew faster than output.