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US Home Building and Selling Improves Further as Softwood Lumber Prices Continue Rising
In it’s quarterly report the US Census Bureau’s quarterly Survey of Construction detailed that over the first two months of 2018, the total number of single-family permits issued nationwide reached 123,871. On a year-over-year basis, this is an +11.2% increase over the February 2017 level of 111,356 single-family permits. The results from the SOC are…
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US Construction Materials Prices: March 2018
Building materials prices in the US continued to climb in March, according to the latest Producer Price Index release by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Tuesday. OSB-led price increases, up +9.3% since February, while the indexes for ready-mix concrete (+3.3%), softwood lumber (+2.2%), structural steel (+2.0%), and gypsum products (+1.1%) also moved higher. US Construction Materials…
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Full Year 2017 North America Forest Industry Data Out Now
Just last week the US Census, Statistics Canada, and Industry Canada have updated data for Canadian and US lumber and log sales and export, and Canadian softwood lumber production and sales. Most of the insight to emerge from this latest data is as expected, but one thing which seems to have slipped past most observers…
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US Residential Construction Spending: Feb 2018
NAHB analysis of Census Construction Spending data, released Monday, shows that total private residential construction spending in the US stood at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of US$533 billion in February, a gain of 0.1% from the upwardly revised estimate of January. Over the past 12 months, total private residential construction spending was up 5.5%.…
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US Construction Self-Employment Rates: Full Year 2016
According to the 2016 ACS, released Thursday, over 23% of construction workers are self-employed, while an economy-wide average does not reach 10% of the employed labor force. The high self-employment rates in construction reflect a common practice of builders and remodellers to maintain relatively small payrolls and rely on subcontractors for a large share of…
