Associated Builders and Contractors

non-residential is where it gets interesting as a reminder non-residential is everything that isn't housing so offices factories warehouses hospitals data centers and so on does anyone else find the term non-residential construction a jarring word that doesn't seem to make sense in my head until you list it out like i just did Anyway, private non-residential spending rose 0.4% in July, which is, I guess, stability.

And Anibam Basu, the chief economist at the Associated Builders and Contractors, said the increase in non-residential construction spending that occurred in July was entirely due to data centers.

He said excluding that booming category, non-residential spending fell for the second straight month and is down to the lowest level since September 2023.

Surprise, surprise.

Construction employment kept growing, even as the broader labor market softened.

Associated Builders and Contractors estimates the industry needs roughly 349,000 additional workers in 2026 just to balance labor supply with demand.

Driven by ongoing data center investment, non-residential specialty trades added 15,400 jobs in July, countering broader economic losses.

The equipment side of that equation matters too, since ordering a transformer or piece of switchgear is not the same as having someone available to install it, a distinction that shows up in project timelines well after capital has already been committed.

Cheap Chinese hardware is already on your site, but it has arrived through a door that nobody has guarded or nobody has blocked.

The Associated Builders and Contractors ran its first drone survey this year and published it around two weeks ago.

36% of their contractor members fly drones, and of those, 97% fly DJI, which is a Chinese company, and the remaining 3% of those companies fly Autol, which is also a Chinese company.

Simply put, our industry's drone fleet is effectively a single Chinese supply chain.

Uh, this takes effect in 2027, so if you fly commercially in Washington, start your, uh, budget today or maybe even talk to your lawmakers.

The Associated Builders and Contractors, which is a major construction trade group, asked its member what drones they currently fly.

DJI came out on top with 97.1%, Autel took the rest, and Skydio, which was the only American brand that was on the list, got 0%.

Uh, this survey happens months after the FCC ban on the new DJI models hit the market, and it shows that the ban has not really pushed contractors yet to go towards American alternatives if they are available.