Covid has played havoc with interpreting economic trends | David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters

Caution is needed when extrapolating from statistics in times that are far from normal

Some economic effects of the coronavirus are obvious. Pre-pandemic, the share of retail sales conducted online had taken around eight years to go from 10% to 20%, but then in nine months shot up to 36% in January 2021.

But perhaps more surprising was a recent dramatic headline from Bloomberg: UK Wage Growth Hits a Record as Vacancies Pass 1 Million". This was based on estimates from the Office for National Statistics' monthly wages and salaries survey that average regular pay had increased by 7.4% over the past year. So why should we be cautious in interpreting this huge rise?

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