Posts Tagged ‘material’
Tuesday, May 29th, 2018
Article source: ConstructConnect
Aficionados of horror movies know there are certain things – e.g., the proximity of Frankenstein’s monster – that will cause ‘the villagers’ to pick up their pitchforks and charge into the woods for a confrontation. It’s widely understood that the ‘villagers’ are you and me.
Such works may be escapist fiction, but while basic safety and security will always be a primary concern in real life, there are other terrors in non-fiction that are equally likely to incite our concern and ire and they’re mainly economic – e.g., a scarcity of jobs or sky-high prices.
With respect to inflation and rapidly increasing price levels, this article looks at three products that for many people are essentials – rent, gasoline and coffee.
Charts 1 through 6 show the year-over-year percentage changes of the rent, gasoline and coffee sub-indices within the broader Consumer Price Index (CPI) data produced by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and Statistics Canada.
In the U.S., media headlines immediately prior to Memorial Day Weekend carried the message that travelers taking to the roads were about to discover that a fill-up at the gas pump would cost them nearly one-third more than a year ago.
The stronger U.S. economy has been contributing to more demand for gasoline. According to the website, www.gasbuddy.com/charts, the average price of gasoline in America is now $3.00 USD per gallon. Last year at the same time, it was $2.40. The increase has been +25%.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, Canada, coffee, Economic, Economics, Economist, Economy, gasoline, job, jobs, Labor, market, material, money, oil, real estate, rent, residential
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Tuesday, April 3rd, 2018
Article source: ConstructConnect
This article provides a ranking of America’s Top Dozen States according to their goods export volumes in full year 2017.
Total U.S. goods exports last year amounted to almost one-and-a-half trillion dollars.
The background foreign trade data comes from the Census Bureau’s web-based site entitled USA Trade Online. While it’s relatively easy to open a free account, if one is not familiar with ‘pivot tables’, there is a bit of a learning curve to access the statistics.
The type-of-product designations follow the definitions in the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).
(1) Texas:
Texas, with export shipments of $264.1 billion and a 17.9% share of the nation’s total, was the leader among U.S. states for foreign sales in 2017. The NAICS category at the top of the Lone Star State’s exports list was ‘computer and electronic products’ ($47.0 billion), but close behind were ‘petroleum and coal products’ ($44.0 billion), ‘chemicals’ ($40.0 billion) and ‘oil and gas’ ($32.0). ‘Chemicals’ exports were dominated by synthetic rubber.
While Texas has a high level of computer-product exports, it would be more accurate to say that the State is especially strong in energy-product export sales. Energy products as a catch-all would combine refined petroleum (e.g., gasoline), chemicals, crude oil and natural gas for more than $100 billion.
In 2017, there were substantial increases in oil exports from Texas to China, Canada and South Korea. Other major customers for Texas crude last year were Mexico and Brazil.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, architect, build, Economic, Economics, Economist, Economy, election, employ, Housing, interest rate, Labor, market, material, money
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Thursday, September 1st, 2016
Article source: ConstructConnect
Table 1 accompanying this article sets out U.S. price movements for numerous construction materials from a variety of time markers in the past to the present (i.e., July 2016).
The data comes from the Producer Price Index (PPI) series calculated and published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Graphs showing the history of the behind-the-scenes index figures on which the percentage changes in Table 1 are based also appear below.
Some of Table 1’s most significant shifts have been as follows.
The charge for softwood lumber in July of this year was +7.8% compared with six months earlier, but it was a more modest +3.0% when set next to July of 2015.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, architect, build, ConstructConnect, Construction, Economic, Economist, material, resources
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Tuesday, May 10th, 2016
Article source: CMDGroup
Standing on the periphery of today’s jobs reports from the U.S. and Canada, I feel more like a cop on the beat, when confronted by bystanders at a minor altercation, than an economist.
My gut reaction is to say, “Move along, please. Not much happening here.” But I don’t want to put you off from reading the rest of this article.
In both countries, the unemployment rates stayed the same, 5.0% for America’s economy and 7.1% for Canada’s.
Month-to-month job creation in the U.S. was a decent enough 160,000, but it was below the 200,000 benchmark that gets everyone at least a little excited.
The last time the month-to-month increase in employment was as low occurred in September of last year (149,000), although January of this year wasn’t that much better (168,000).
Our expectations may have become slightly overblown, after February and March figures of +233,000 and +208,000 respectively.
2016’s monthly average gain in jobs through April, at +192,000, has now dropped by 6.3% compared with the same first four months of 2015, at +205,000.
The latest month-to-month employment increase for the services sector (+174,000) was actually greater than for the economy as whole. Therefore, goods-production must have acted as a drag on payrolls and indeed that was the case. The workforce in ‘mining and logging’ was downsized by 8,000 positions.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, build US, Canada, CMD, CMDGroup, construct, employment, house, job, jobless, market, material
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Friday, January 29th, 2016
Article source: CMDGroup
Following up on the subject of Canadian construction material costs, this Economy at a Glance concentrates on seven graphs.
Graph 1: Softwood lumber prices in Canada rose rapidly throughout 2012, but over the past three years, they have stayed mainly flat. The U.S.-Canada softwood lumber agreement (SLA), after being in effect for nine years, was allowed to expire in October of last year.
Participants in Canada wanted to see continuation of the SLA under the same terms as originally negotiated. The U.S. industry has been wishing for a re-calibration of provisions.
Under the SLA, quotas and/or export taxes were to be imposed on Canadian producers when prices fell below a benchmark range. Individual provinces were allowed to choose their own form of regulation. Additional disputes were argued on several occasions before the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA).
Without the SLA, as shown by the long history of contentious wrangling prior to its 2006 implementation, there is considerable potential for legal action that will disrupt North American lumber markets. (more…)
Tags: Alex Carrick, architect, build, Canada, CMD, CMDGroup, construct, material
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Tuesday, January 26th, 2016
Article source: CMDGroup
Similar to the U.S., the price advances of many materials and building products going into the construction process in Canada remain restrained.
The +0.3% figure year-over-year (y/y) for total construction − from line 4 of accompanying Table 1 − does, however, incorporate considerable variation at the type-of-structure sub-category level.
At this time, a sizable gain in non-residential building material costs (+3.6% y/y), plus a mid-range increase in residential costs (+2.2% y/y), are being offset by a significant decline in engineering/civil costs (-3.2% y/y).
The divergent performances result primarily from: 1) demand/supply factors driven by activity levels in each of the three main type-of-structure sub-categories; and 2) different weightings of material inputs to build houses versus office buildings versus roads and highways.
The material composition of residential construction has a large forestry component, although domestic lumber prices are also affected by housing starts south of the border.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, build, Canada, CMD, CMDGroup, construct, manufacture, material
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Monday, January 25th, 2016
Article source: CMDGroup
The cost of construction is largely determined by labor and material inputs.
The previous Economy at a Glance studied U.S. year-over-year average hourly wages in construction relative to all private sector jobs and other major industries.
Expanding the analysis somewhat, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in its monthly Employment Situation report, publishes four series on wage rates. Table B3 records average hourly and average weekly earnings for all employees in a range of industries. Table B8 has similar average hourly and weekly earnings information, but only for production and non-supervisory personnel.
For construction, the December 2015 year-over-year results were +2.9% (average hourly) and +4.2% (average weekly) from Table B3 and +2.7% (average hourly) and +3.3% (average weekly) from Table B8.
To summarize, the earnings results for construction ranged from +2.7% to +4.2% annually.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, architect, build, CMD, CMDGroup, Construction, cost, Labor, material, US, wage
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