There was a surprising uptick in construction spending in March, although residential construction was still slightly off from the previous month.

This morning, the Commerce Department released its preliminary estimates on the value of construction (including infrastructure) put in place for March. The month's seasonally adjusted annualized rate was $847.3 billion, 0.2% higher than February’s revised total of $845.5 billion. That represented the first increase in that value in five months, and the construction sector outperformed the expectations of economists polled by Thomson Reuters, who had anticipated a marginal monthly decline.

However, Commerce estimates that the boost in spending came primarily from public construction activities, which rose 2.3% in March over February. Conversely, the value of private-sector construction fell to its lowest level since January 1999. Total construction spending in March was also 12.3% below the same month a year ago, as was public construction portion of that spending, down 6.3%.

A reverse trend of sorts was evident in residential construction spending, which in March was down 1% from February, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $260.5 million, but up 1.6% over the same month in 2009. Residential construction spending was off in the first quarter of 2010, after two previous quarters of gains........read more