WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (Reuters) – U.S. construction spending increased in December, lifted by a rebound in single-family homebuilding \u200cas well as ongoing strength in home renovations.<\/p>\n
The Commerce \u200cDepartment’s Census Bureau said on Friday that construction spending rose 0.3% after \u200bfalling 0.2% in November. The increase was in line with economists’ expectations. Construction spending slipped 0.4% year-on-year in December. The data was delayed by last year’s government shutdown.<\/p>\n
Spending on private \u200cconstruction projects rose 0.5% \u2060in December after easing 0.2% in November. Investment in residential construction increased 1.5% after being unchanged \u2060in November. Spending on new single-family housing projects rebounded 1.5%. Spending on multi-family housing units, which account for a small \u200bshare of \u200bthe housing market, rose 0.1%.<\/p>\n
Renovations \u200bincreased further. Despite December’s \u200cacceleration, homebuilding remained sluggish amid higher mortgage rates, more expensive building materials because of tariffs on imports, and labor shortages.<\/p>\n
A decline in mortgage rates in recent weeks could spur construction, though building lots remain scarce. Residential investment has declined for \u200cfour straight quarters.<\/p>\n
Spending on private \u200bnonresidential structures like offices and factories \u200bdropped 0.7% in December. \u200bSpending on nonresidential structures has contracted for eight \u200cconsecutive quarters, despite a surge \u200bin the construction \u200bof data centers to support artificial intelligence<\/a>.<\/p>\n Investment in public construction projects decreased 0.5% after falling 0.2% in November. \u200bState and local \u200cgovernment construction spending declined 0.7% in December, but outlays \u200bon federal government projects increased 1.6%.<\/p>\n (Reporting by Lucia \u200bMutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (Reuters) – U.S. construction spending increased in December, lifted by a rebound in single-family homebuilding…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":620770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,9886,265720,79,49089,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-620769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-construction","tag-construction-spending","tag-economy","tag-government-shutdown","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116144725295348363","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}