The pandemic has exposed the shortcomings in how we measure everything, from inflation to GDP to jobs, says Helen Thomas

Statistics haven’t quite kept pace with the world they’re meant to measure. Designed for an economy of assembly lines and cheque books, many of today’s headline figures feel increasingly out of step with a digital, service-driven, side-hustling reality. GDP can’t tell you what Tiktok’s doing to productivity and inflation stats seem to live in a parallel universe where no one buys coffee. Yet these numbers are still rolled out like gospel, ready to be cherry-picked, spun and weaponised by anyone with a point to prove. Unfortunately financial markets rely on them as if they were unbiased indicators in the cockpit, showing altitude and cruising speed. But because they always have, doesn’t mean they always will. If investors forget this, the ground may be approaching them much faster than they think.

The pandemic has exposed the shortcomings in our historical measures of data. The US ISM Manufacturing data is widely valued for its long track record of closely tracking the ups and downs of the US business cycle. This didn’t work when the global economy suddenly shut down and reopened in 2020. Within one year the indicator plunged to a........

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