The numbers say stall, not slide. Construction spending ran at a seasonally adjusted $2,210.2 billion annual rate in May, the Census Bureau reported, up a rounding-error 0.1% from April and down 1.5% from a year ago. Strip out the public sector and the picture is softer still.
Public construction did the lifting, up 0.5% to $541.2 billion, with highways up 0.6% to a $150.6 billion rate and education inching up to $113.4 billion. Federal infrastructure dollars are still flowing, and it shows.
A labor market that won’t quit
Hiring told the same two-speed story. Payrolls added 17,000 jobs in May to 8.34 million, per AGC’s read of the data, up 68,000 over the year. Nonresidential firms drove almost all of it, adding 101,500 positions year over year, while residential shed 33,300. Construction pay rose 5.0% against 3.6% for the private sector as a whole, a reminder that the skilled-trades crunch is a wage story, not just a headcount one.
What to watch
The split matters for anyone planning 2027 backlog. Data centers, semiconductor fabs and public infrastructure are holding the top line up while housing and mid-market commercial drag. That’s survivable if you’re staffed for the sectors that are spending. It’s a problem if your book is weighted toward the ones that aren’t.
Data: U.S. Census Bureau and AGC of America.