United States - Value of construction put in place: Private - Residential - Total

Construction Put in Place measures the amount of construction done each month on new residential and non-residential buildings and structures, public construction, and improvements to existing buildings and structures. Data are shown by type of construction, in seasonally adjusted and unadjusted dollars, in current dollars. Statistics are available at the U.S. level monthly, and division annually for selected categories; selected annual data is also available for states. Construction activities accounted for more than 7% of GDP in 1992.

Data estimates include: the cost of labor and materials; cost of architectural and engineering work; overhead costs, overhead costs assigned to the project; interest and taxes paid during construction; and contractors’ profits.

Composite estimates are based on mail-out/mail-back and interview surveys of selected construction projects and building owners; and estimates developed or compiled from other Census Bureau, Federal agency, and private data sources. Five surveys collect data used to estimate 65% of total monthly value of construction put in place; other estimates cover the remaining 35% of work done.

The Construction Progress Reporting Surveys are mail-out/mail-back surveys of owners of sampled construction projects that collect data on expenditures for 3 types of new construction: privately-owned nonresidential buildings (e.g., office buildings and shopping malls), State and local construction projects (e.g., highways, schools, and housing), and privately-owned apartment buildings.

Projects are selected using stratified random sample procedures. Private nonresidential and state and local projects are selected from lists compiled by the F.W. Dodge Company (and supplemented with a small sample of projects in non-permit issuing areas), with strata based on type of construction and estimated project value. Apartment projects are a sub-sample of multi-unit projects identified in the Survey of Construction, with strata based on building location and number of housing units.

Owners of selected building projects report on the value of work done each month from project start through completion. These 3 surveys currently cover about 4,000 private non-residential, 6,500 State and local, and 1,500 apartment projects each month.

The Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES), and Survey of Residential Alterations and Repairs (SORAR), collect quarterly data from residential building owners on expenditures for improvements and repairs. The CES is an interview survey of 8,700 U.S. urban households, and includes expenditures for improvements and repairs to owner-occupied housing units. The SORAR is a mail-out/mail-back survey of about 2,000 owners of rental or vacant residential buildings identified in the CES. Monthly value in place data are imputed and revised as quarterly results from both surveys become available.

Other estimates are developed or compiled for the value of construction done but not covered by surveys. Examples include estimates of new home construction based on fixed phasing patterns applied to the number and cost of new houses identified in the Survey of Construction; construction expenditures for electric power facilities obtained from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; and data on cable television construction obtained from industry trade association statistics.

Construction projects are classified by the type of ownership during the construction period.

1. Privately Owned
2. Public - Government Owned (state, local, federal government)

Moody's Analytics calculates several identities from the C30. A list of these identities and, their titles and formulas are provided in the table below.

Each year in July, the source releases annual benchmark revisions. Not seasonally adjusted data is revised for the previous 2 years while the seasonally adjusted data is revised for the previous 7 years.

The monthly data is released about a month after the end of the reference month. The annual data at the national and regional level is released 4 to 6 months after the end of the reference year; the state level data lags by well over a year.

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