April 2021 P.I.P. Construction Spending – U.S. Census Bureau

Over the past year we have seen an increase in construction spending of 9.8%. Total residential spending increased by 29.5% while non-residential spending decreased by 3.9%. We see the largest declines in spending from the lodging industry down 21.9% from this time last year. We also see a large monthly decrease in spending on public safety. This is expected as more people are vaccinated and we see a return to normality. We see the largest increases in spending in the water supply industry as well as the sewage and waste disposal industry, both have grown by 2.5% and 2.2% over the past year.

In some of the larger private sectors we see a growth trend as manufacturing is up 0.6% from last year and 0.5% from last month. This trend continues into the office and commercial sectors, both having developed a 3 month growth trend and down only 1.3% and 2.2% from last year respectively. In the largest public sectors we see declines year over year in highway & street, education, and transportation spending. However, from last month we see highway and street spending up 0.6%.  

Residential spending has made up for a bulk of spending lost on the non-residential side. Spending on single family houses has increased by 36.6 from April 2020 and 1.3% from March 2021. Meanwhile spending on multi-family housing construction has increased 27.1% from April 2020 and 1.9% from March 2021.