Nonresidential construction spending rose 14 billion in 2025 after 450 in three years
The annual rate stands at 1,309 billion dollars, the highest of six readings, and the step that brought it there is the smallest rise in the series. Spending on manufacturing plant fell 29 billion in the same year, so a total that barely moved sits on top of a 43-billion rise in everything else.
by
Published Corrected 3 minute read
رسم توضيحي: The Cefa Brief
Nonresidential construction spending is at the highest reading in its window and has almost stopped rising. The annual rate was 1,295 billion dollars in 2024 and 1,309 billion in 2025, a step of 14 billion. The three steps before it added 450 billion between them.
The six readings are 856 billion dollars in 2020, 845 in 2021, 968 in 2022, 1,193 in 2023, 1,295 in 2024 and 1,309 in 2025. Each is a seasonally adjusted annual rate, a figure for a year rather than for a month. Measured from the first reading to the last, the series is 453 billion higher than it was in 2020.
Notes: Annual observations. Each point is a seasonally adjusted annual rate, so it states a year's spending and not a month's, and the series is stated in current dollars with no adjustment for construction costs.
Source: The Cefa Brief
Chart description
A line chart showing nonresidential construction spending at 856 billion dollars a year in 2020, 845 in 2021, 968 in 2022, 1,193 in 2023, 1,295 in 2024 and 1,309 in 2025. The line falls slightly at the first step, rises at every step after it, and is close to level between 2024 and 2025, where it reaches its highest point.
A line chart showing nonresidential construction spending at 856 billion dollars a year in 2020, 845 in 2021, 968 in 2022, 1,193 in 2023, 1,295 in 2024 and 1,309 in 2025. The line falls slightly at the first step, rises at every step after it, and is close to level between 2024 and 2025, where it reaches its highest point.
The steps, not the level
Year on year the series moved by minus 11 billion, then 123, then 225, then 102, then 14. The largest step, 225 billion into 2023, is roughly sixteen times the most recent one. The only fall in the series, the 11 billion lost in 2021, is smaller in size than the rise recorded in 2025.
A reader taking the level alone finds the highest point in the window and concludes that building is running hard. The increments describe something else: a climb that lasted three years and a fourth year in which it stopped. Both statements come from the same six numbers.
What the flat year is made of
Manufacturing plant is counted inside this total, and plant spending fell. That series reads 244 billion dollars in 2024 and 215 billion in 2025, a fall of 29 billion on the same seasonally adjusted annual-rate basis. Subtracting it year by year leaves nonresidential spending other than plant at 1,051 billion in 2024 and 1,094 billion in 2025, a rise of 43 billion. The flat total is the arithmetic of those two moves: 43 up, 29 down, 14 left over.
Everything other than plant is therefore still growing, and growing by more than three times the total's own gain. It is also slowing. On the same subtraction the remainder stood at 843 billion in 2022, 991 in 2023, 1,051 in 2024 and 1,094 in 2025, so its last three steps were 148 billion, then 60, then 43. Deceleration and decline are different findings, and the remainder shows the first without the second.
A peak reading and a stalled series are the same six numbers read two ways. The level says where building is. The steps say what is happening to it.
What the series does not settle
The figures are in current dollars. An annual rate that holds at 1,309 billion tells you what was paid, not what was put up, and the series carries no adjustment for what construction cost in any of these years. If building costs rose over the window, the same dollars bought less structure at the end of it than at the start, and nothing in these six numbers establishes whether they did.
Scope is the second limit. Residential building sits outside the series entirely, the equipment installed inside a finished structure is not construction spending, and the published points identify no state, owner or industry. Anyone reading this as a map of where capital landed is reading past the measure.
The sentence the data supports is narrow. Nonresidential construction spending reached its highest annual rate in 2025, the year it rose least, and the small rise covers a fall in plant and a larger rise in everything else. Whether the flat step is the end of the climb or a pause in it, these six readings do not say, and the next observation will settle more than any reading of this one can.
Updates and corrections
Correction ·
Corrected 19 September 2026. An earlier version added that reading a figure as a single month's would understate it by roughly a factor of twelve. That had the relationship the wrong way round: the figure is already stated at a yearly rate, so reading it as one month's overstates that month. The sentence has been removed rather than reversed, because the method note already says plainly that each point is a yearly rate and approximates the year. No figure in the piece has changed.
Method and data
The figures are annual observations of total nonresidential construction spending, series TLNRESCONS, published by the U.S. Census Bureau, redistributed by FRED and retrieved for this site on 19 September 2026. The unit is billions of dollars at a seasonally adjusted annual rate: each monthly observation is already stated as a yearly rate, so each annual point is itself a yearly rate and approximates that year's own spending. The figures are in current dollars with no adjustment for construction costs, so the series cannot separate how much was built from what building cost. It measures the value of nonresidential construction put in place and nothing else: not residential building, not the equipment installed in the structures, not employment, and not the state, owner or industry behind the spending. The manufacturing-plant series quoted in the text, TLMFGCONS, is a separate series from the same agency stated on the same seasonally adjusted annual-rate basis. Where the text gives spending other than plant, that figure is TLNRESCONS minus TLMFGCONS for the same year, computed here on the understanding that Census counts manufacturing structures within the nonresidential total; no such remainder series is published, and nothing in this piece states the remainder as a share of the total.
How to cite
Jag DeSaint, "Nonresidential construction spending rose 14 billion in 2025 after 450 in three years," The Cefa Brief, Applied America, 6 أغسطس 2025, https://applied.thecefa.org/cefa-brief/the-last-step-was-fourteen-billion. Updated 19 سبتمبر 2026.
About the author
Each author told us that for this piece they hold no interest a reader would think relevant.
This Insights piece carries its author's name because the view in it is the author's own. An editor reviewed it before publication, which is not the same as agreeing with it. It is not a position of the Center for Economics & Foreign Affairs or of Applied America.
© 2025. The author or authors hold the copyright in this Insights piece; CEFA publishes it with their permission. This edition, its editing and its presentation are © 2025 Center for Economics & Foreign Affairs. To republish it, see our republication terms. Republishing
Share
The Cefa Brief · applied.thecefa.org/cefa-brief/the-last-step-was-fourteen-billion · Printed from the web edition