So, I thought I’d clarify a few things.
In a recent Oct’26 interview Kevin Hassett said: “We’re building factories like nobody’s business. We’ve got 113k workers who weren’t building factories when President Trump took office who are out there building factories.
Now here’s what the construction data shows.
Manufacturing construction spending peaked in Q4 2024. It has been declining since. Currently down 32% from peak, with 10% more decline to come, as expected, since every boom (mnfg boom 2021-2024) has a declining tail end back to normal. See Manufacturing Spending Taper for explanation.
BTW, the CHIPS Act, in the Biden administration, created the manufacturing construction boom, the largest nonresidential building construction boom in recorded history.
It takes about 5000 jobs to put-in-place $1billion of construction in one year. When Trump took office Jan 2025, there were approximately 1.25 million workers building manufacturing facilities. Today there are about 750,000.
Hassett’s claim that there are 113k more manufacturing construction jobs now than Jan’25 does not hold up. 113,000 more jobs would imply that there is now about $23 billion more mnfg construction taking place than in Jan’25. In fact, the annual rate of mnfg construction has fallen from $226bil in Jan’25 to $155bil in Aug’26, a decline of $71bil.
Even if Hassett includes Data Centers in his manufacturing numbers, his comment doesn’t hold up. If including Data Centers with Manufacturing, the annual rate of construction has fallen from $272bil in Jan’25 to $234bil in Aug’26, a decline of $38bil. But, for the record, Data Centers are not considered manufacturing facilities.
However, in that same period of time, Jan’25 to Aug’26, while the number of jobs building manufacturing facilities declined by 350,000-400,000, the number of construction jobs building data centers increased by 175,000-200,000.
Manufacturing total market is 3x-4x the size of the data center market. That will change over time as data center spending increases and manufacturing spending settles back to normal, but it’s not expected to flip (data centers greater than mnfg) until 2028. So,currently, just for a point of clarification, compare construction spending % vs $.
A 65% increase in data center spending is +$30 bil. A 25% decrease in manufacturing spending is -$50 bil
The manufacturing construction spending boom increased $180 billion in 3 years. The data center construction spending boom increased $60 billion in 3 years. Mnfg construction spending decreased $60 billion in 1 year.
Although for the past 20 months data center spending is increasing rapidly, the taper off in manufacturing spending is having a greater effect on total construction spending. BTW, I predicted this several years ago. See the article linked above.
