The decline in construction activity this year was broader, steeper and faster than many economists anticipated as private non-residential building markets succumbed to the credit crunch and many public markets waited for stimulus funding to be delivered. The consensus of this year’s batch of forecasts for construction in 2010 says the worst is over, but most gains will be the result of percentage comparisons with dismal 2009 numbers, while market fundamentals will be unable to sustain much forward momentum. Wall Street analyst sometimes call this activity a “dead-cat bounce.”
McGraw-Hill Construction is forecasting the dollar value of total U.S. construction starts in 2010 will climb 11% to $466.2 billion, following an estimated 25% decline in 2009. “This is not a booming market; it is just inching upward,” says Robert Murray, chief economist for McGraw-Hill Construction (MHC), of which ENR is part. “At the very least, we are stabilizing after years of steep declines,” he says.