British construction output was flat in May compared with April, data showed on Friday, tempering expectations that the country’s overall economic growth picked up speed during the second quarter.
Output in May dropped 4.8 percent on a yearly basis – hurt by bad weather and an additional working day in May 2012, the Office for National Statistics said.
Output fell by the same amount in the three months between March and May compared with the same period in 2012, it said, a slightly less sharp fall than in the first quarter.
The monthly construction data was measured in seasonally adjusted terms by the ONS for the first time.
The construction industry was hurt by the financial crisis and now accounts for about 6 percent of the economy. The government has sought to help the sector with various stimulus plans, including the new Help to Buy scheme announced in March.
The construction figures form part of overall gross domestic product (GDP).
Britain’s economy is widely expected to have grown more quickly in the second quarter than in the first three months of the year, when it expanded by 0.3 percent. Despite the overall economic growth, construction shrank in the first quarter.
Earlier this week, industrial production and manufacturing figures for May came in short of analysts’ forecasts. But economists still largely stuck to their predictions of economic growth of 0.5 or 0.6 percent in the second quarter.
The ONS is due to release a preliminary estimate of GDP in the second quarter on July 25.
Earlier this month, a survey of purchasing managers showed British construction grew in June for a second month in a row.