Every two weeks, we prepare a report focused on understanding market intelligence and analyzing construction industry data and trends.
This in-depth report is developed primarily for internal distribution, but because we want to keep construction professionals like you informed about the industry, we make this report available to anyone who's interested in reading it.
What's New In This Report?
Highlights
CPI-U, which measures inflation, increased 0.1% in August 2019, after rising 0.3% in July.
In August 2019, the Housing Market Index (HMI) rose to 68 with increased performance in the current sales component of the index.
Construction Update
In August 2019, housing permits reflected an annual rate of 1.41M, 12.0% above their year-ago rate with increases in both Single-family and Multi-family permits.
Housing starts in August 2019 were 6.6% above their year-ago rate with 1.4M starts, increases in both Single-family and Multi-family starts.
The Dodge Momentum Index (DMI) reached 137.8 in August 2019, 1.3% below the revised July score of 139.6.
Economic Update
In August 2019, the unemployment rate stayed at 3.7% after adding 130K jobs, 14K of which were in the Construction Industry.
Out of the large MSAs (1M+ population), 33 of 51 showed year-over-year unemployment rate decreases in July 2019 with Burlington-South Burlington, VT, having the lowest unemployment rate of 1.8%.
