The growing credit crisis is pulling construction down along with Wall Street investment banking firms. After a brief two-month rebound, the annual rate of growth for construction put-in-place plummeted nearly 1 % in July, bringing construction growth 5% below a year ago (see chart). On a year-to-date basis, construction put-in-place through the first seven months of the year was down 5.4% from the same period in 2007, according to the U.S. Dept of Commerce. Nearly all of the year-to-year decline was due to the 28% drop in the value of residential construction. Other private nonresidential building markets are still going strong. The office building market is up 13% above July 2007's level, according to Commerce's July data. At $34 billion, the office building market was the second largest in the private sector, behind the commercial market, which was up 4% for the year, to $49 billion. The private sector also saw annual gains of 46% for manufacturing work and 45% for power-plants.
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