Construction Spending Flat for April, Missing Consensus Forecast

Construction spending for April came in at an estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,298.5, a flat reading (±1.3%) that missed the consensus forecast. That’s 1.2% (±1.5%) below the April 2018 estimate of $1,314.7 billion.

During the first four months of this year, construction spending amounted to $386.1 billion, 0.2% (±1.3%) above the $385.5 billion for the same period in 2018.

“While the April gave us a flat reading, the report for March was upgraded significantly to +0.1% from a previously reported -0.9%,” Tim Anderson, analyst at TJM Investments on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).”

“It’s also noteworthy that the Dow (^DJI) and S&P 500 (^SPX) have rallied over +0.5% since this and the ISM PMI were released at 10:00 am,” he added. “The Dow now sporting a gain of over +100 points and the S&P 500 is in the green by nearly 10 handles.”

Private Construction Spending

Spending on private construction came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $954.0 billion, or 1.7% (±1.0%) below the revised estimate of $970.4 billion for March.

Residential construction came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $499.3 billion in April, or 0.6% (±1.3%) below the revised estimate of $502.4 billion for March.

Nonresidential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $454.7 billion, which is 2.9% (±1.0%) below the revised estimate of $468.0 billion for March.

Public Construction Spending

The estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate of public construction spending was $344.6 billion, which is 4.8% (±2.5%) above the revised estimate of $328.7 billion for March.

Educational construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $80.0 billion, 2.1% (±2.6%) above the revised estimate of $78.3 billion for March.

Highway construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $114.3 billion, 6.8% (±8.6%) above the revised estimate of $107.0 billion for March.