Report Update: Construction Activity on the Rise
June 9, 2020
OxBlue’s artificial intelligence (AI) tools are now being used to measure the effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on construction activity across the United States. The full analysis looked at all 50 states and more than 100 metropolitan areas between March 1st, 2020, and June 5th, 2020. Weekends and holidays have been excluded.
Since our last report, the six states who previously had the largest decreases in construction activity (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Massachusetts, Washington, New York, and Colorado) are on an upswing. With the exception of Michigan, all six are seeing an increase in activity when compared to national levels from early March. Though still below this baseline, Michigan appears to be approaching positive percentages for the time being.
As it’s home to the largest economy and one of the top 10 states with the most construction projects, we continue to monitor California’s activity. It continues to mostly follow the national average, maintaining a bump in the positives for the first week of June. New Jersey, which had drastic changes in activity in March and April, has had a large increase in activity since the beginning of May and currently sits at a 35% increase.
On a national level, activity is experiencing its first increase above 5% since early March. Levels hovered at around the baseline for the second half of May and began steadily increasing since June 1st.
This increase is supported by a recent Associated Builders and Contractors report stating there were 464,000 new construction jobs in May, 237,000 of which were in nonresidential construction. This comes after the industry saw a record number of job losses in April. As all 50 states have begun reopening, construction activity levels are expected to increase through June.
As the crisis continues, OxBlue will share regular updates on how the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is affecting the construction industry and on the technology being developed to combat the spread of the virus.
If you have any questions, please contact us or call (888) 849-2583.
Notes: The time period in this analysis includes the 97 workdays (weekdays) from March 2, 2020, to June 5, 2020. The OxBlue Construction Activity Index is a 5-day moving average. The current baseline for the OxBlue Activity Index is the average activity level for the workdays from March 1st to March 19th, the date Pennsylvania issued its strict shelter-in-place order. The data analyzed is from commercial construction projects and excludes single-family residential construction. States with low levels of construction activity and without statistically significant data have been excluded for accuracy. National construction activity is based on a weighted average of the construction volume for each state.