Article source: ConstructConnect
ConstructConnect expects growth of the U.S. economy to slow in 2020 and 2021, before picking up steam once again in 2022. Total construction activity, as measured by put-in-place capital spending, will be negatively affected to some degree, although it will receive support from homebuilding work that is generating ‘new shoots’ and mega projects that are underway and planned in the industrial and heavy engineering type-of-structure categories.
ConstructConnect calculates and publishes ‘starts’ statistics. But this article features put-in-place (PIP) numbers that come from the Census Bureau. ‘Starts’ focus on projects which break ground in any given month. The PIP approach, however, is analogous to monitoring progress payments as projects proceed over several months or even years.
PIP numbers follow behind, or lag, up-front ‘starts’ statistics. They are less volatile than ‘starts’, with smaller amplitudes between peaks and troughs.
Best Trend Line ‘Fits’ Are in Engineering Construction
ConstructConnect’s PIP forecasts are set out in Graphs 1 through 20. Each graph shows ‘actuals’ from the Census Bureau through 2019 (although 2019 is an estimate based on year-to-date ‘actuals’ through October) and projections for 2020-2022 made by ConstructConnect.
Each graph also contains an Excel-generated trend line out to 2022. In many instances, the trend line offers little more than a loose visual guideline to the pattern of the PIP numbers. But in some cases, the trend line captures the path of the ‘actuals’ and forecasts to a striking degree.
