Economic reports from the federal government and some private third parties on construction spending and employment have implications for various aspects of commercial real estate, according to a report from Moody's Analytics.

Start with construction spending, as on January 3, the Census Bureau announced that November 2022 construction activity of $1,807.5 billion was 0.2% over October's $1,803.2 billion, which was revised downward by 0.2%. And, as these notes often say, the confidence interval around the November numbers was plus or minus 0.8%. Because the confidence interval included zero, the agency can't tell whether there was an actual change or not.

Even with the change in October, according to the Moody's analysis, "the November 2022 increase is supported by gains in nonresidential construction that more than offset residential declines." And while single-family construction was down 2.9% month over month, or -10.2% year over year, multifamily construction was up 2.4% month over month or 10.7% year over year. Since April 2020, "private residential new multifamily construction spending has well outpaced single family and the trajectories have move in severely opposite directions in recent months." The split likely owes to higher mortgage rates, as Moody's notes, and probably the explosion in house prices, given other data and what sources have told GlobeSt.com over time.