September’s Employment Situation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the total number of jobs in the U.S. economy rose by +263,000 last month. The gain in employment of a quarter of a million jobs was the weakest showing among all the months of this year so far, but it was still a pretty decent number. It’s not the sort of figure one would expect if the economy were becoming mired in a recession. That may still happen, but it isn’t necessarily here yet.

ConstructConnect’s Expansion Index is a monthly measure of the dollar value of planned or ‘contemplated construction projects compared to the same month one year ago. The Index geographically covers Canada, the United States, and their respective metropolitan statistical areas.

Return on investment is an essential component in the decision-making process of owners and developers of new construction projects, as it measures the difference between the income stream from an investment and its cost, usually on an annual basis. As such, a construction project can raise its ROI by either increasing its income-generating ability or by decreasing its construction costs and/or operational expenses.

As ConstructConnect has reported previously, the markets for single and multi-family homes have taken divergent paths in recent months. In large part, this has resulted from sweeping interest rate increases coupled with recent years of strongly rising home prices.

A strange thing is happening with the U.S. foreign trade balance. It’s improving significantly. It’s no longer as steeply in the hole as it was. And why this is so unusual is because it’s occurring while the value of the U.S. dollar is rising, making imports cheaper and more attractive and rendering exports more expensive and, therefore, a harder sell.

While the business cycle impacts virtually all businesses, the timing of its impact can vary between industries. In my past work as a Chief Economist in the manufacturing sector, I carefully studied and wrote about the manufacturing business cycle between 2017 and early 2022. During this time—and as in prior business cycles—it was very clear that changes in new orders for manufactured products led all other components of manufacturing activity.

There are aspects to the current inflation problem that deserve an airing. First, while the U.S. all-items CPI-U increase, often referred to as the headline rate, is +8.3% y/y and the core rate, which leaves out price-volatile food and energy items, is +6.3% y/y, there is another measure that isn’t nearly as extreme.

Large U.S. domestic banks at the start of September 2022 had $1.46 trillion* in commercial and industrial loans outstanding; representing an 18% increase from a year ago. This marks the fastest expansion in C&I loans from the large banks category since 2008.

In the United States, the Federal Reserve has just raised its key policy-setting interest rate, the federal funds rate, into a range from 3.00% to 3.25%. The intent is to cool inflation, which is +8.3% year over year for the Consumer Price Index (i.e., CPI-U, with U standing for urban consumers). The U.S.  core inflation rate is +6.3%. Core leaves out price-volatile energy and food items.

There will be a lot riding on the hoped-for success of the U.S. manufacturing sector over the decade-plus ahead if the goals concerning carbon emission reductions by mid-century are to be met. There will need to be tremendously large investments in electric vehicle production line expansions, new EV battery plants, computer chipmaking operations, and in the fabrication of all the building products that will go into renewable electricity generation, utility-sized power storage units, coast-to-coast recharging stations, new hydrogen extraction facilities, and so on.