The number everyone quotes is 8.0 months. The number that matters is 7.5.
Associated Builders and Contractors released its July Construction Backlog Indicator on August 11, and the headline reading fell 0.8 months from June to 8.0, the lowest since January. It’s also down 0.8 months from July 2025. But ABC split the survey by data center exposure, and that split is the whole story: the 88% of member contractors with no data center work under contract reported an average of 7.5 months of backlog. The 12% that do have data center work reported 11.4.
A 3.9-month gap inside one survey
That’s a 3.9-month spread between two halves of the same industry, measured in the same survey, over the same period. ABC fielded it between July 20 and August 4.
Every industry group, every region and every company-size band declined month over month. The South is the only region still carrying more backlog than it did a year ago. Backlog in the $30 million to $50 million annual revenue category, mid-size firms that mostly build schools, retail, light industrial and municipal work, fell to its lowest level since March 2020.
“Backlog fell sharply in July and is down to the lowest level since January,” said Anirban Basu, ABC’s chief economist. “The data center boom masks the depth of this weakness, as there is a lack of momentum in any other segment.” Basu added that the dynamic “has been particularly difficult for small and mid-size contractors.”
Sentiment and signed contracts are moving apart
ABC’s Construction Confidence Index went the other way in part. Sales and staffing expectations both fell; profit margin expectations rose. All three stayed above 50, the line between expansion and contraction, so contractors are still telling ABC they expect growth.
Expecting growth and having it under contract are different things, and the gap between them usually closes in the direction of the contracts. A firm with 7.5 months of backlog in an environment where bid volume is thinning has roughly two quarters of visibility. That’s enough to keep crews together. It isn’t enough to add them.
What it changes for bidders
The practical read for anyone outside the data center vertical: pricing discipline is about to get tested. When mid-size contractors run their backlog down toward six months, someone in every bid list decides to buy work, and margin assumptions written in the spring stop holding. Owners with projects ready to go will see that in their September and October numbers.
It also reframes how to read aggregate nonresidential data. Spending totals that look stable are being carried by one vertical with an unusual client base and an unusual appetite for schedule certainty. Strip it out and the picture underneath is a market that has been slowing for a year. Mixed-use developers are still moving on projects like the $500 million Midtown64 district in Henrico County, Virginia, but those deals are getting done on signed anchor tenants and equity partners, not on general market confidence.
ABC surveys its own membership, which skews open-shop and commercial, so the reading isn’t a census. It has also been a reliable early indicator. The next release will show whether July was a step down or the start of a slope.