Line
Real Construction Spending: Factories vs. Data Centers
Private construction put in place, seasonally adjusted annual rate, adjusted for construction prices, $ billions at 2025 prices
Plays the chart through its history. Pauses are where the data set a record or moved most.
Manufacturing · Continuation · the recent trend, flattening · 30 days
Data centers · Continuation · the recent trend, flattening · 30 days
Dashed: the projection from the latest reading. Shaded: the range about two in three outcomes land in. A projection, not a promise.
U.S. Census Bureau, Construction Spending (C30), value put in place, seasonally adjusted annual rate, divided by the BLS producer price index for final demand construction and expressed in 2025 prices: a Palanor calculation. One price index deflates every type, so real changes for a single type are approximate. The newest month is preliminary. Data centers are reported separately from January 2014; the price index starts in November 2009.
Two kinds of private building that grew fast in the 2020s: factories, and the data centers behind cloud computing and AI. Both are in constant 2025 prices, so the lines show changes in the volume of building, not just costs.
What this chart reads
- U.S. Real Private Construction Spending · Manufacturing (2025 Prices, SAAR)as “Manufacturing”latest 2026-08-01
- U.S. Real Private Construction Spending · Data Centers (2025 Prices, SAAR)as “Data centers”latest 2026-08-01
Sources
U.S. Real Private Construction Spending · Manufacturing (2025 Prices, SAAR). Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Construction Spending (C30), value of construction put in place, seasonally adjusted annual rate. Public domain. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Producer Price Index for final demand construction (series WPSFD43), read from the BLS API. Public domain. Deflated by Palanor.
U.S. Real Private Construction Spending · Data Centers (2025 Prices, SAAR). Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Construction Spending (C30), value of construction put in place, seasonally adjusted annual rate. Public domain. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Producer Price Index for final demand construction (series WPSFD43), read from the BLS API. Public domain. Deflated by Palanor.
Charts are drawn from Palanor's signal library and recomputed from source data on every view. Transformations (changes, indexing, year-on-year rates) are Palanor's.