Housing Starts dropped -5% in June 2010. Last month housing starts were revised to a -14.9% decline from April.

Privately-owned housing starts in June 2010 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 549,000. This is 5.0 percent below the revised May 2010 estimate of 578,000.

The below St. Louis Fred graph is the monthly percentage change in single units for new housing starts. Single family housing starts dropped -0.7% in June, which is flat in comparison to last month's -17.2% drop.

Building permits rose +2.1% but single family new building permits declined -3.4%. Below is a graph of building permits, or new authorizations to construct, starting from 1960. Think about the overall population growth since 1960...

The below St. Louis Fed graph is just single family building permits, from January 2005.

Housing completions surged, but this is just to make a tax credit June 30th deadline:

Privately-owned housing completions in June were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 886,000. This is 26.2 percent (±15.3%) above the revised May estimate of 702,000 and is 11.0 percent (±15.2%)* above the June 2009 rate of 798,000.
Single-family housing completions in June were at a rate of 676,000; this is 31.3 percent (±15.7%) above the revised May rate of 515,000. The June rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 202,000.

As always the uber source for housing data is Calculated Risk.

There is a lot of statistical error in housing starts and permits, which is outlined in the report.

Bottom line you can kiss off any real job growth from housing and construction anytime soon. Here is a graph and blog showing how housing has not recovered in comparison to other recessions.

Here is last month's report, not revised.