Manufacturing construction has fallen in every month the Census table prints, and it accounts for about two thirds of the year's drop in total construction spending
The monthly number says nothing, and the Census Bureau is the one saying so.
Construction spending ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $2,166.5bn in June, 0.1 percent below the revised May estimate of $2,168.5bn, against a confidence interval of plus or minus 0.8 percent. Private construction moved 0.1 percent, on an interval of 0.5. Public construction did not move at all, on an interval of 1.6. Residential fell 0.3 percent, on an interval of 1.3. Every month-over-month change in the release carries an asterisk, and the bureau's explanatory notes define what the asterisk means: the range contains zero, so it is uncertain whether there was an increase or a decrease.
The year is a different matter. June is 3.2 percent below June 2025 against an interval of 1.5 percent, and the first six months of 2026 came to $1,046.9bn against $1,084.5bn for the same period last year, down 3.5 percent against an interval of 1.0 percent. Neither range contains zero.
Where the money went out
$71.2bn came off the annual rate between June 2025 and June 2026. Manufacturing supplied $46.9bn of it.
Spending on manufacturing plant ran at $172.7bn in June against $219.6bn a year earlier, down 21.4 percent, and the private share of it fell 22.0 percent to $170.3bn. The table prints five months, and manufacturing is lower in every one of them: $181.9bn in February, then $179.8bn, $177.0bn, $174.7bn and $172.7bn.
Residential is the other large drag, down 4.7 percent over the year, or $43.9bn. Add those two categories together and the sum exceeds the whole decline, which is another way of saying that everything else, on net, went up.
Where it went in
Office. Office construction ran at $132.8bn in June against $118.0bn a year earlier, up 12.5 percent, with the private share up 15.1 percent. It is higher in each of the same five months, from $122.9bn in February.
Public construction is up 1.7 percent over the year to $544.1bn. Power is up 3.5 percent, communication 2.3 percent, transportation 2.2 percent. The two largest percentage gains anywhere in the table are conservation and development at 31.8 percent and religious buildings at 28.2 percent, on bases of $16.6bn and $6.5bn, which is small enough that the percentages carry more weight than the dollars do.
