The Department of Commerce said construction spending during May was at an estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate of $753.5 billion, 0.6 percent below the revised April estimate of $757.9 billion. The May construction spending figure is 7.1 percent below the May 2010 estimate of $811.2 billion. During the first five months of this year, construction spending amounted to $285.1 billion, 6.3 percent below the $304.4 billion for the same period in 2010.
Private construction
Spending on private construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $477.2 billion, 0.4 percent below the revised April estimate of $479.3 billion. Residential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $228.9 billion in May, 2.1 percent below the revised April estimate of $233.8 billion. Nonresidential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $248.3 billion in May, 1.2 percent above the revised April estimate of $245.4 billion.
Public construction
In May, the estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate of public construction spending was $276.3 billion, 0.8 percent below the revised April estimate of $278.6 billion. Educational construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $68.6 billion, 2.3 percent below the revised April estimate of $70.2 billion.
The key construction categories with the biggest decreases over the past 12 months included lodging (-28.8%); manufacturing (-19.6%); office (-12.4%); and single-family home construction (-11.9%). On the flip side, construction of electric power facilities increased significantly both month-to-month (+5.2%) and year-to-year (+27.2%).
Value Of New Construction Put In Place — May 2011
Value of Construction Put-in-Place ($ millions, seasonally adjusted annual rate)
1-Preliminary; 2-Revised
Note: The U.S. Census department changed its construction categories beginning with its May 2003 statistics.
With the changes in the project classifications, data now presented are not directly comparable with those data previously published in the regular-format press releases and tables. Direct comparisons can only be made at the total, total private, total state and local, total federal, and total public levels for annual and not seasonally adjusted monthly data. For more information, check out http://www.census.gov/const/www/c30index.html.