Posted on August 4, 2026

On Monday, Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) reported that US nonresidential construction spending rose 0.1% in June, according to its analysis of the US Census Bureau’s latest Construction Spending Report. On a seasonally adjusted annualized basis, spending totaled $1.277 trillion.

Spending increased monthly in eight of the 16 nonresidential subcategories. Public and private nonresidential construction spending each rose 0.1%, while private nonresidential spending was down nearly 5% from a year earlier.

ABC Chief Economist Anirban Basu said:

“Through April 2025, private nonresidential construction spending ascended to $806.1 billion on a seasonally adjusted annual rate basis, an all-time high. Since then, that figure has expanded only three times over the past 14 months.

Despite an ongoing data center construction boom, private nonresidential construction spending has declined to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $745.3 billion since the April 2025 peak, which translates into a decline exceeding 7%. Tellingly, private nonresidential construction spending excluding data centers fell 0.6% in June 2026 and is down 7.9% year-over-year.

Meanwhile, data center construction was up 7% in June and up 46% from a year ago. Contractors working on data centers continue to benefit from this momentum. According to ABC’s latest Construction Backlog Indicator, the 13% of ABC members under contract to work on data centers have significantly higher backlog of 11.0 months rather than the 87% that are not working on data centers with a backlog of 8.5 months.”

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