Value of Construction Put in Place at a Glance - January 2015: Barely misses 2015 estimates, but up from January, 2014.

JANUARY 2015 CONSTRUCTION AT $971.4 BILLION ANNUAL RATE:

The U.S. Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce announced today that construction spending during January 2015 was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $971.4 billion, 1.1 percent (±1.2%)* below the revised December estimate of $982.0 billion. The January figure is 1.8 percent (±1.6%) above the January 2014 estimate of $954.6 billion.

PRIVATE CONSTRUCTION

Spending on private construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $697.6 billion, 0.5 percent (±1.0%)* below the revised December estimate of $700.9 billion. Residential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $351.7 billion in January, 0.6 percent (±1.3%)* above the revised December estimate of $349.5 billion. Nonresidential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $345.9 billion in January, 1.6 percent (±1.0%) below the revised December estimate of $351.5 billion.

PUBLIC CONSTRUCTION

In January, the estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate of public construction spending was $273.8 billion, 2.6 percent (±2.0%) below the revised December estimate of $281.1 billion. Educational construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $58.9 billion, 3.4 percent (±4.1%)* below the revised December estimate of $60.9 billion. Highway construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $88.3 billion, 0.6 percent (±4.8%)* above the revised December estimate of $87.8 billion.

February 2015 data will be released on April 1, 2015 at 10:00 A.M. EDT.

For more detailed data and methodologies, go to our website:

http://www.census.gov/constructionspending

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The U.S. Census Bureau updated its Application Programming Interface (API) with monthly and quarterly economic indicators. The API allows developers to combine Census Bureau statistics with other data sets to create tools for research on a variety of topics.

EXPLANATORY NOTES

In interpreting changes in the statistics in this release, note that month-to-month changes in seasonally adjusted statistics often show movements which may be irregular. It may take 2 months to establish an underlying trend for total construction and as long as 8 months for specific categories of construction.  The statistics in this release are estimated from several sources and surveys and are subject to sampling variability as well as nonsampling error including bias and variance from response, nonreporting, and undercoverage. Estimates of the standard errors are provided in Table 3. Whenever a statement such as "2.3 (±3.1) percent above" appears in the text, this indicates the range (-0.8 to +5.4 percent) in which the actual percent change is likely to have occurred. All ranges given are 90 percent confidence intervals and account only for sampling variability. If a range does not contain zero, the change is statistically significant. If it does contain zero, the change is not statistically significant; that is, it is uncertain whether there was an increase or decrease. Statistics for the current month are preliminary estimates subject to revision in following months as additional data become available. The average absolute percent changes from preliminary estimate to first revision for the major seasonally adjusted components are as follows: total construction, 0.75 percent; private construction, 0.86 percent; and public construction, 1.22 percent.

* 90% confidence interval includes zero. The U.S. Census Bureau does not have sufficient statistical evidence to conclude that the actual change is different from zero.

Value of Construction Put in Place at a Glance - January 2015

	Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate				Not Seasonally Adjusted
	(millions of dollars)				(millions of dollars)
Total	971,384	XLS (11k)	PDF (31k)		67,298	XLS (11k)	PDF (31k)
Private	697,597	XLS (15k)	PDF (36k)		50,131	XLS (15k)	PDF (36k)
Residential	351,722	XLS (8k)	PDF (16k)		23,860	XLS (8k)	PDF (16k)
Nonresidential	345,875	XLS (8k)	PDF (18k)		26,271	XLS (8k)	PDF (18k)
Public	273,787	XLS (11k)	PDF (24k)		17,167	XLS (11k)	PDF (24k)
State and Local	252,080	XLS (11k)	PDF (31k)		15,625	XLS (11k)	PDF (31k)
Federal	21,707	XLS (8k)	PDF (18k)		1,542	XLS (8k)	PDF (18k)

Source: US Census Bureau