Article source: ConstructConnect
ConstructConnect announced today that January’s volume of construction starts, excluding residential work, was $27.8 billion, a change of -6.7% compared with December 2018’s level of $29.7 billion. The latest month-to-month adjustment was in close alignment with the usual shift in starts volumes between December and January, due to seasonality, of -8.5%.
Nonresidential starts in January 2019 relative to the previous five-year average for January, i.e., from 2014 through 2018, were -4.5%. January 2019 compared with January 2018 was -20.6%. At $35.0 billion, January 2018 managed an abnormally high volume of starts activity.
The starts figures throughout this report are not seasonally adjusted (NSA). Nor are they altered for inflation. They are expressed in what are termed ‘current’ as opposed to ‘constant’ dollars.
‘Nonresidential building’ plus ‘engineering/civil’ work accounts for a larger share of total construction than residential activity. The former’s combined proportion of total put-in-place construction in the Census Bureau’s latest report, for November, was 59%; the latter’s was 41%.
