Construction spending shot up by 1.4% in October according to Commerce Department data, thanks to a jump in home construction that brought the sector to its highest level since November 2008. Spending on private single-family projects was up 3.6% for the month and 29.0% higher year-over-year. Private multifamily spending was 6.2% higher on a monthly basis and 53.2% higher annually.
The industry’s overall improvement was nearly three times what economists had predicted in a Bloomberg survey, in a “signal the industry is poised to make a bigger contribution to economic growth,” the news agency reported.
That sentiment was echoed by Russell Price, a senior economist at Ameriprise Financial Inc. “We’re seeing fairly dramatic improvement in new housing starts and good general housing construction activity over the last several months,” he told Bloomberg. “Construction—especially residential construction—is in a very sustainable recovery that should last a few years, absent a misstep in Washington.”
See Bloomberg’s full report on October’s construction spending numbers.
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