Finally! Amidst all the holiday cheer, we are happy to report a positive Architecture Billings Index this month. From August through October, the ABI has had a crazy run with large dips in the index, but November has changed that with a score a 52.0. Up from 49.4 in October, the 52.0 teamed with a new projects inquiry index of 65.0 rounds out a strong November. Interesting to note, the South led the regional averages with 54.4 followed by the Midwest (50.9) and then the Northeast (49.1) and the West (45.6). And, the sector breakdown measured multi-family residential at 55.8 while industrial/commercial tallied 53.9/ “This is a heartening development for the design and construction industry that only a few years ago accounted for nearly ten percent of overall GDP but has fallen to slightly less than six percent,” said AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker, PhD, Hon. AIA. “Hopefully, this uptick in billings is a sign that a recovery phase is in the works. However, given the volatility that we’ve seen nationally and internationally recently, we’ll need to see several more months of positive readings before we’ll have much confidence that the U.S. construction recession is ending.”
