The AEC Lens 
Alex Carrick, Chief Economist at ConstructConnect
Alex Carrick is Chief Economist for ConstructConnect. He is a frequent contributor to the Daily Commercial News and the Journal of Commerce. He has delivered presentations throughout North America on the Canadian, United States and world construction outlooks. A trusted and often-quoted source for … More » U.S. Corporate Profit Growth Stymied by Energy Sector SlideApril 5th, 2016 by Alex Carrick, Chief Economist at ConstructConnect
Article source: CMDGroup North America’s major stock market indices have taken investors on a ‘theme park’ ride over the past 12 months − as can be seen from Graph 1. More often than not, it hasn’t been much fun. There were substantial dips for all four indices – Dow Jones Industrials (DJI), the S&P 500, NASDAQ and the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) − in September of last year, followed by recovery for the U.S. series, and then another crater in the January-February period of this year. Canada’s TSX stayed mainly down once it faltered in the fall of last year. In the most recent month, however, there were notable improvements once again. At the close of trading in March 2016, the DJI, S&P 500 and NASDAQ were all within 1.0% of their levels achieved a year prior. The TSX moved +4.9% during the month of March, but was still -9.4% year over year. Worry has centered on the likely performance of corporate profits. It’s well known that in the energy sector, the low price of oil is taking a heavy toll on the revenues of exploration and extraction companies, as well as their service and material suppliers. Read the rest of U.S. Corporate Profit Growth Stymied by Energy Sector Slide A Bit More Ammunition for a Fed Rate Hike from March’s U.S. Jobs ReportApril 1st, 2016 by Alex Carrick, Chief Economist at ConstructConnect
Article source: CMDGroup In March, the size of the U.S. labor force rose by nearly 400,000, as many working-age people who were previously on the sidelines jumped back into the job hunt. As a consequence, the participation rate rose to 63.0%, a climb of 0.3 percentage points since the start of the year’s level of 62.7%. Both developments are votes of confidence in possible employee prospects. They indicate more out-of-work individuals now feel they have a better shot at finding a welcoming face, corporate or otherwise, to pay them a living. This notion received a boost from March’s month-to-month gain in the total number of non-farm jobs in the economy, +215,000, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Furthermore, the total employment increase was widely dispersed among industry categories, with payrolls in ‘education and health’ (+51,000) increasing the most; but with ‘retail trade’ (+48,000) and ‘leisure and hospitality’ (+40,000) not that far behind. Read the rest of A Bit More Ammunition for a Fed Rate Hike from March’s U.S. Jobs Report Applying the High-tech Wizardry of Sparklines to Economic DataMarch 30th, 2016 by Alex Carrick, Chief Economist at ConstructConnect
Article source: CMDGroup Yes, I’m an economist first, but in my secondary role as ‘tech whiz’ – my wife and kids would guffaw at that assertion – I’ve come across an exciting feature of standard Excel spreadsheets that I feel must be shared with you. Of course, there’s always the danger that I’ve finally clued in to something everybody else has known about for years. However, I’ve asked around and it seems most people aren’t yet aware of a tool called ‘Sparklines’ that is highly worthwhile. And neat and cool and easy to use. Let’s suppose you have a ‘wall’ of data, such as appears in Table 1 that accompanies this Economy at a Glance. I’ve included the row numbers and column letters for ease of explanation. The statistics in cells ‘C2’ diagonally to ‘O22’ are percent changes of U.S. put-in-place construction investment, latest 12-month averages versus previous 12-month averages. Retail Sales Story in U.S. and Canada is a Twisty NarrativeMarch 29th, 2016 by Alex Carrick, Chief Economist at ConstructConnect
Article source: CMDGroup Obtaining a proper read on retail sales in the U.S. and Canada these days has been made harder by the sharp drop in gasoline prices, -20.7% year over year south of the border and -13.1% on the north side. As a result, February’s cash register ‘take’ by gas station operators in the U.S. was -15.6% year over year, while in Canada, in January, it was -7.1%. (Retail sales data from Statistics Canada consistently lags results from the Census Bureau by a month.) Therefore, U.S. retail sales in February that were +3.1% year over year in total including gas station billings, were a much better +4.8% without them. Similarly in Canada, an already good jump in total retail sales in January of +6.8% improved to an outstanding +7.3% when sales at the pump were omitted. Read the rest of Retail Sales Story in U.S. and Canada is a Twisty Narrative U.S. Housing Starts Forecasts and Long-term GraphsMarch 24th, 2016 by Alex Carrick, Chief Economist at ConstructConnect
Article source: CMDGroup CMD’s latest U.S. housing starts forecasts appear in Table 1 of this Economy at a Glance and the patterns for ‘total’, ‘single-family’ and ‘multi-family’ are readily apparent from the three accompanying graphs. Charts showing the long-term regional results for Northeast, Midwest, South and West can be found in the web version of this story (please provide link). All the graphs include a dotted trend line as provided by Excel. Huge pent-up demand for U.S. new housing construction has been accumulating since 2007. That’s ten years, or a decade, with residential groundbreakings in a crater that descended as steep as only about half a million units in 2009. (They pinnacled at 2.1 million in 2006.) Read the rest of U.S. Housing Starts Forecasts and Long-term Graphs U.S. Economy Adds Nearly One-quarter of a Million Jobs in FebruaryMarch 7th, 2016 by Alex Carrick, Chief Economist at ConstructConnect
Article source: CMDGroup A significant milestone has just been reached in the U.S. labor market. For the latest week ending February 27th, America’s initial jobless claims figure was less than 300,000 for the 52nd week in a row. That’s a whole year of strong success in keeping the number of people newly unemployed quite low. (In the Great Recession of 2008-2009, the number topped off at 670,000.) Falling below their 300,000 benchmark level, rosy initial jobless claims automatically imply encouraging news from the Employment Situation Report published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The BLS has just reported that in February, the total number of jobs in the U.S. rose by 242,000, where a gain of 200,000 or more is considered bullish. The national unemployment rate stayed below 5.0% at 4.9%, the same as in January. A year ago, it had been 5.5%. In another positive sign, the proportion of working-age people who actively sought employment in February moved a little higher, to 62.9%. This measure is called the ‘participation rate’ and it usually picks up when job prospects are good. (On the flip side, when job prospects are abysmal, people stop looking for work and the result is a ‘discouraged worker’ effect.) Read the rest of U.S. Economy Adds Nearly One-quarter of a Million Jobs in February That’s Not How Things are Usually DoneMarch 3rd, 2016 by Alex Carrick, Chief Economist at ConstructConnect
Article source: CMDGroup Okay, I admit it, I’m flummoxed. I’m supposed to be writing about the economy, but how can I stay focused in the midst of a U.S. presidential election campaign. Voting day may still be eight months away, in November, but there are distractions galore in the surround-sound coverage of the primaries and caucuses. The economy has become a side-show event compared with what is going on in the electoral center ring. Over the past decade-plus, the differences between the Democrats and Republicans have become deeper and more firmly entrenched. Positions on the left and right have turned inflexible. Celebrity commentators in the media have played roles in marshalling legions of strident supporters. Policy stances have proven intractable, yielding gridlock in Washington. The crop that’s now being harvested is a disdain for politics as normally practiced. Among Democrats, Hillary Clinton has been hard pressed to establish a lead over her rival, Bernie Sanders, a man who doesn’t hesitate to label himself a socialist. On the Republican side, the candidacy of Donald Trump was supposed to peter out by last September, according to almost all the pundits. Latest Annual U.S. and Canadian City Housing Starts (Parts 3)February 27th, 2016 by Alex Carrick, Chief Economist at ConstructConnect
Article source: CMDGroup The multi-family market is where the excitement is to be found in the U.S. and Canadian city housing starts markets. Table 6 shows some strikingly large percentage gains in multi-family starts from 2014 to 2015, with New York (+109.6%) – already busting at the seams with high-rise towers – more than doubling its annual volume of groundbreakings. Miami (+60.4%) and Dallas-Fort Worth (+54.4%) recorded year-over-year multi-unit starts increases that were ahead by more than half. While Miami has staged a nice recovery (to 16,000 units in 2015) in multi-unit starts since its disastrous level (only 1,600 units) in the Great Recession year of 2009, it still remains considerably below its 15-year previous best figure of 23,300 units in 2005. Dallas, on the other hand, in 2015 (28,000 multi-family units) shot well past its prior most stellar year (18,400 units in 2008). Boston (+42.5%), Los Angeles (+34.2%) and San Francisco (+30.5%), in 2015, had multi-family starts levels that were close to or better than one-third higher than in 2014. Latest Annual U.S. and Canadian City Housing Starts (Parts 2)February 26th, 2016 by Alex Carrick, Chief Economist at ConstructConnect
Article source: CMDGroup In the previous Economy at a Glance, there was an examination of ‘total’ housing starts in the largest urban centers in the U.S. and Canada. 2015 ‘actuals’ and year-over-year percent changes were laid out in two tables for 12 cities south of the border and six on the northern side. The figures are being called ‘starts’, although for the U.S. centers they are actually derived from residential building permits. The city definitions are based on broad boundaries that include downtown cores and nearby suburbs with close commuting ties. In this current EAAG, the focus will be narrowed to the single-family market. Nation-wide in the U.S., single-family starts are now accounting for about two-thirds of total starts, with multiples making up the other 33%. (In Canada last year, the proportions were the reverse, 35% for singles and 65% for multiples.) The share in the U.S. taken by ‘singles’ has dropped dramatically over the past several years. A decade ago, it wasn’t uncommon for singles to be as much as 80% of total starts. Read the rest of Latest Annual U.S. and Canadian City Housing Starts (Parts 2) Canadian Put-in-place Construction Forecasts: Spring 2016 Edition (Part 1)February 25th, 2016 by Alex Carrick, Chief Economist at ConstructConnect
Article source: CMDGroup Based on the latest ‘actuals’ from Statistics Canada, the spring 2016 forecasts, out to 2019, of construction capital spending − also known as put-in-place investment – have just been calculated by CanaData. Versus the fall of 2015, the year-over-year projections have mostly been scaled back. Grand total constant dollar (i.e., adjusted for inflation) construction will decline a further 3.1% in 2016 after a drop of 3.4% in 2015. 2017 will see a slight improvement of +1.0%, followed by +3.5% in 2018 and +4.3% in 2019. In the fall of last year, the comparable percentage changes were: 2015, -2.2%; 2016, +0.5%; 2017, +2.7%; and 2018, +4.1%. There was no 2019 forecast at that time. In current dollars, 2015’s grand total was $285 billion, or -2.4% compared with $292 billion in 2014. After a further 1.8% decline in this current year, 2016 will chalk up a volume of slightly less than $280 billion. Current dollar gains of 2.9% and 5.6% in 2017 and 2018 respectively will finally lift the total dollar value of all Canadian put-in-place construction activity above $300 billion two years from now. Read the rest of Canadian Put-in-place Construction Forecasts: Spring 2016 Edition (Part 1) |
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