Constuction Spending: Januray 2010

Today, the U.S. Census Bureau released their January read of construction spending showing a continued slowing of the government’s tax-carrot fueled bounce in residential construction spending while indicating continued weakness to non-residential construction spending.

Even with the governments tax-credit gimmick, residential construction spending is still 6.43% below the level seen last year and a whopping 61.44% below the peak set in March 2006.

Worse off though was private single family residential construction spending which declined 8.61% as compared to December 2008 and a truly grotesque 75.74% from the peak set in February 2006.

Non-residential construction spending, currently accounting for over half of all private construction spending, posted another significant year-over-year decline of 19.91%.

The following charts (click for larger versions) show private residential construction spending, private residential single family construction spending and private non-residential construction spending broken out and plotted since 1993 along with the year-over-year and peak percent change to each since 1994 and 2000 – 2005.