Value of New Construction Spending Registers 8.7% YTY Increase in February

Private construction. Spending on private construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $680 billion, 0.1% above the revised January estimate of $679.1 billion. Residential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $360.4 billion in February, 0.8% below the revised January estimate of $363.2 billion. Nonresidential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $319.6 billion in February, 1.2% above the revised January estimate of $315.8 billion.

Construction of private electric power plants enjoyed a sizable month-to-month increase of 4.7% to $49.1 billion and was also up 10.5% YTY over Feb. 2013. At $37.4 billion for the month, private multi-family construction was up 2.6% MTM and 29.7% YTY over the same period from last year.

Public construction. In February, the estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate of public construction spending was $265.7 billion, 0.1% above the revised January estimate of $265.5 billion. Public educational construction is still soft and came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $59.5 billion, 1.2% below the revised January estimate of $60.2 billion, and 8.7% below last February. Public commercial construction was up 8.4% MTM but was still down 27.4% from Feb. 2013.