The numbers underscore the extent to which investment in data centers is becoming increasingly central in the US economy. Another report on international trade published Friday by the Census Bureau showed imports of capital goods — including products key to the AI buildout, like semiconductors and computing equipment — surged a record 40% in April from a year earlier.
“Apart from data centers, we expect non-residential spending to remain quite sluggish” in the coming quarters “amid heightened uncertainty due to the war and rising input costs,” Nancy Vanden Houten, the lead US economist at Oxford Economics, said Monday in a note on the construction spending data.
