Construction spending fell 1.7% in March, after construction spending for both January and February were revised much higher. The Census Bureau's report on construction spending for March (pdf) estimated that the month's seasonally adjusted construction spending would work out to $1,284.7 billion annually if extrapolated over an entire year, which was 1.7 percent (±0.8%) below the revised annualized February estimate of $1,306.4 billion
Over recent days, we’ve seen the release of five reports which provide us with the lions share of contributions to 3rd quarter GDP for the months of July and August.
In addition to the Employment Situation Summary for August from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, last week also saw the release of four July reports that give us the lion's share of that month's contribution to 3rd quarter GDP, and in some cases suggest revisions to 2nd quarter GDP. This post reviews those four reports, with an eye to assessing their impact on GDP growth.
With the first Friday of the month, the Employment Situation Summary for May from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was obviously the most widely watched release of last week. But the week also saw the release of four reports for April that give us the lion's share of that month's contribution to 2nd quarter GDP, and in some cases suggest revisions to 1st quarter GDP.
With its release of November construction spending data, the Census revised all its construction data going back to January 2005, and admitted a large "processing error" that had caused all residential construction data to be misstated in the interim.
In the report on May construction spending (pdf), the Census Bureau estimated that our seasonally adjusted construction spending would work out to $1,035.8 billion annually if extrapolated over an entire year, which was 0.8 percent (±1.5%)* above the revised estimate of a $1,027.0 billion annual rate in April and 8.2 percent (±2.0%) above the estimated adjusted and annualized level of construction spending of May last year
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