New housing construction starts

As new housing construction starts have recovered in the US, the price of a pint of lager in Britain has risen, a transatlantic correlation of 0.993 that connects American subdivisions to British pub culture with the mathematical confidence of an exchange rate nobody asked for. The foundation is poured in Phoenix, the pint is poured in Peckham, and the chart spans the Atlantic without noticing the ocean in between.

US housing starts recovered from their post-2008 nadir of about 554,000 to roughly 1.6 million by 2022. UK pint prices rose from about £3.00 to over £4.60 during the same period. Both are measures of inflation and economic recovery in their respective economies: housing starts recovered as the US economy healed from the financial crisis, and pint prices rose as British operating costs increased. The shared variable is the global post-2008 economic recovery, which restored housing demand in one country and inflated beverage costs in another.

Eleven years of US housing and UK pint prices is a transatlantic economic recovery story told through two very different lenses. The houses go up because the economy recovered, the pints cost more because everything costs more, and the chart connects them across an ocean with the breezy confidence of a macroeconomic textbook. The mortgage is American. The hangover is British. The recovery is shared.