Industry watchers were mildly surprised to see a 0.8 percent increase in the dollars spend on construction in August–this from figures released today by the Department of Commerce. Just keep in mind that the margin of error on these reports is plus/minus 1.8 percent, which means construction dollars could have risen 2.6 percent or fell as much as 1 percent.
Revised and more accurate figures will be out in a month. Muting the enthusiasm for this possible increase are the revised numbers for July which showed a 1.1 percent decline instead of the 0.2 percent decline expected.
