Key construction indicators moved in a positive direction during May, but almost every economic report highlighted strength in data center projects and weakness in other areas.
Planning activity and developments increased month over month in May. Contractors as a whole also added more work to their books during the month. Meanwhile, job openings in the construction sector reached their highest level of the year during this period.
However, the rosy picture increasingly belongs to contractors with exposure to the creation of artificial intelligence.
While health and infrastructure work has supported activity in recent months, contractors still found most of the growth coming from AI-related construction, according to economic reports. The highest job opening level in 10 months likely reflects “exceptional demand” for certain roles critical to data center construction, said Anirban Basu, chief economist at Associated Builders and Contractors.
Outside these builds, however, contractors reported tougher conditions.
Private spending on nonresidential construction, for example, fell for the seventh consecutive month in May. At the same time, the costs of construction work are not cheap. Input prices rose at their fastest annual pace in May since the pandemic, according to data from the US Census Bureau.
Read Construction Dive’s roundup of the latest economic data below.
