National Snapshot: methodology & how to read it

Every figure, the big national number, each category, and each indicator, is a 0–100 score, not the raw value. Higher is always better: each indicator's direction is already built in, so you never have to remember which way is good. Inflation, for example, is “lower is better”, so elevated inflation produces a low score.

• 0–30 red: poor · ~30–65 amber: middling · 65–100 green: strong.
• A category score is the simple average of its three indicators. The national score is the category-weighted average (see below).

Most indicators are scored against their own 10-year baseline: green when they are meaningfully better than that baseline, red when materially worse. This answers “how is this doing versus its own recent history?”

Two cost-of-living indicators are scored against fixed thresholds instead, Mortgage Repayment Burden (green ≤25% of income, red ≥35%) and Rental Burden (green ≤25%, red ≥30%), because affordability is an absolute standard, not something that should look “fine” just because it has been bad for a while.

A green score also requires a favourable trend: an indicator sitting in a good range but heading the wrong way is marked down. So the score blends both level and direction.

Because scores are relative to each indicator's own scale, a “72” on one and a “72” on another both mean “doing well on its own terms”; they are not the same raw quantity.