Single Family Construction Spending Struggles to Catch up to 2018
Construction spending by both the public and the private sector grew in November, totaling a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.324 trillion dollars. This is 0.6 percent higher than the $1.316 trillion rate in October and represents 4.1 percent growth compared to the $1.271 trillion in construction put in place in November 2018.
On an unadjusted basis, construction spending was $110.7 billion during the month compared to $117.8 billion the previous month. For the first 11 months of the year, spending is down 0.8 percent from $1.212 trillion in 2018 to $1.202 trillion in 2019.
Expenditures for privately funded construction projects was as a seasonally adjusted rate of $985.5 billion in November, up 0.4 percent from October and 1.6 percent from November 2018. On an unadjusted basis it totaled $83.0 billion and for the year-to-date (YTD) has consumed $896.1 billion, a 3.2 percent annual decline.
Privately funded residential construction increased by 1.9 percent during the month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $536.1 billion compared to $526.4 billion in October. The unadjusted total for November was down from $46.6 billion in October to $45.0 billion.
For the YTD, residential spending is down 5.6 percent from the same period in 2018 at $474.6 billion. The YTD decline is due to a 6.9 percent decrease in single family construction which dropped from $269.2 billion the previous year to $250.7 billion for the first 11 months in 2019. At the same time, multifamily spending gained 3.9 percent over the prior YTD to $56.9 billion.
The seasonally adjusted rate of single-family construction spending in November was $280.7 billion and it was $24.6 billion on an unadjusted basis. The adjusted rate was 1.2 percent higher than in October, but down 0.3 percent from the rate in November 2018. Multifamily spending was at a rate of $59.1 billion, essentially unchanged from October and down 3.9 percent year-over-year.
Spending by the public sector was at a rate of $338.7 billion, an increase of 0.9 percent for the month and 12.4 percent higher on an annual basis. For the year through the end of November spending has totaled $286.0 billion, an increase of 6.8 percent from the same period in 2019.
There was $590 million spent on publicly funded residential construction during the month of November and $5.9 billion was spent during the first 11 months of the year. This is 2.4 percent less than the $6.1 billion spent over the same period the prior year.
