Data Centers

$78.7B in data center construction is still unstarted preconstruction — and AGC says the labor pool it's absorbing is tightening bids on projects with no data centers in sight.

Spending fell 3.8% year over year while contractors added 22,000 jobs in August. That gap is where margin goes to die - and why cash timing decides this year.

July's construction spending reads flat. Underneath it, manufacturing is down 21% and the rest of nonresidential is quietly up 2.7%. Two different markets.

Dodge's August Momentum Index barely moved, down 0.4%. But commercial planning excluding data centers fell almost 19% year-over-year — a gap the flat headline hides completely.

July construction spending fell 3.8% y/y and input costs held at 7.1% — double the 3.5% rise in bid prices — as backlog slipped to 8.0 months and September Fed-hike odds jumped toward 60%.

Contractor backlog broke to 8.0 months across every region and size, input costs held at 7.2% YoY, and the 30-year Treasury hit a 19-year high — data centers (+46%) alone are carrying demand.

Contractor backlog fell to an 8-month low and manufacturing construction is −21.4% YoY, even as tariffed-metal input costs rose 7.4%. A margin market, not a growth market.

A soft July jobs report drove the 10-year Treasury to 4.63% and a September cut back into play — even as construction spending fell 3.2% YoY and data-center delivery risk surfaced.