Every two weeks, Oldcastle Building Solutions Business Intelligence prepares a report focused on understanding and analyzing construction market data and trends.
This in-depth report is developed primarily for internal distribution, but Oldcastle Building Solutions exists to inform construction professionals like you, so we're making this report available for anyone who's interested in reading it.
What's New In This Report?
Highlights
In Q3 2017, the U.S. Homeownership rate increased 0.4% to 63.9%, just above the twenty-year low of 63.5% in Q3 2016.
The Dodge Momentum Index (DMI) rebounded by 13.2% in October 2017 to 130.9; the commercial and institutional building components also rose by 16.8% and 8.3%, respectively.
Construction Update
Construction Put-in-Place was $1.22T in September 2017, 2.0% above year ago activity.
The Engineering & Construction Cost Index (ECCI) in October 2017 reached a score of 61.8, indicating that construction costs continue to rise. The expectation for higher prices in 6 months also remains high.
Economic Update
In October 2017, the unemployment rate declined to 4.1% after adding 261K jobs, reflecting recovery from the impact of August's hurricane activity. The Construction industry added 11K jobs in the month, after adding 8K in September 2017.
48 of 51 large MSAs (1M+ population) showed year-over-year unemployment rate decreases in September 2017. Again, Denver, CO had the lowest rate, at 2.2%.
