Construction spending ran at a $2,157.6 billion seasonally adjusted annual rate in July, 0.5% below June. Ignore that number. The sampling band on it is ±0.8%, which means the monthly decline is not statistically distinguishable from no change at all.
The Census Bureau released July data on September 1. Two figures in it are solid, and they are both down.
The declines that survive the error bars
Year over year, July 2026 is 3.8% below July 2025’s $2,242.6 billion, with a ±1.5% band. Year to date, January through July 2026 totals $1,244.6 billion against $1,289.7 billion a year earlier, down 3.5% with a ±1.0% band. Both clear their bands. The industry is spending measurably less than it did a year ago.
Underneath that, one category went the other way. Private nonresidential rose 0.4% to $755.2 billion with a ±0.3% band, which makes it the only major line with a statistically significant increase. Private residential fell 1.3% to $859.0 billion, a decline the release itself flags as not significant. Total private construction was $1,614.2 billion, down 0.5% and significant.
What the public numbers do and don’t say
Public construction came in at $543.4 billion, down 0.2% with a ±1.6% band. Educational was $112.3 billion, down 0.2% against ±1.6%. Highway was $150.3 billion, down 0.2% against ±4.6%.
That highway band deserves a second look. A ±4.6% interval on a 0.2% reported move means Census cannot tell you whether highway spending rose or fell in July. Anyone writing that highway construction declined is reading noise. The same caution applies to most public categories this month.
ENR’s read of the category detail is that data centers and power are the lines pulling upward inside private nonresidential while the total falls. That’s ENR’s analysis of the Census categories, not a Census breakout. The structural picture it describes is consistent with the numbers that do clear their bands: residential down, private nonresidential up, and the total carried lower by the bigger of the two.
One housekeeping note. June figures throughout this release are revised, as they are every month, so month-over-month comparisons against a previously published June are comparing against a number that no longer exists.
Related on Exchange: a downtown San Jose conversion that waited two years for its debt.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Monthly Construction Spending, September 1, 2026; C30 historical series.