The UK Office for National Statistics announced yesterday that unemployment had dropped for the first time in 18 months. BBC News reported this as a “surprise”:
The number of people unemployed in the UK has fallen unexpectedly for the first time in 18 months… George Buckley [of Deutsche Bank] admitted previous predictions of the unemployment rate reaching 10% now looked unrealistic… [The figures] came as a surprise to many analysts.
But to regular readers of this blog, this news is anything but unexpected: in December 2009, my analysis of unemployment-related search trends clearly indicated that the unemployment rate was about to fall.
So could this be an example of search trends providing early insight into economic data? Possibly, but it’s only one month’s figures we’re talking about. A sustained track record of successful projection is needed to demonstrate that search analysis can yield valuable insights.
Over 2010 I’ll be keeping an eye on the data to see what happens. In the meantime, if you can think of other real-world metrics that might be suitable subjects for search trends analysis, get in touch.