Construction Industry Economic Data Looking Good, Part 2

My previous post was about the relatively strong ABI figures from December 2014. ABI is considered a leading indicator. In this post, let's look at what actually happened. Drum roll...construction spending ended 2014 at its highest level since December of 2008. December 2014's seasonally-adjusted annual rate (SAAR) was $982.1 billion (up 0.4% over the November 2014 estimate). Private construction in December 2014 was reported at $698.6 billion (up 0.1% over the November estimate) and public construction came in at $283.5 billion (1.1% over November 2014 estimate). Both figures represent seasonally-adjusted annual rates. This is the first time public construction increased since 2009, which can be seen in the figure below that was created by Bill McBride at the Calculated Risk blog. This data is not too shabby. The construction market will likely not get back to 2008 levels (I tend to discount residential since we don't teach residential construction at Sac State) for some time, but the construction industry is getting healthier.