Total construction spending dropped 0.6% in January. This is the net of the still slowly declining trend in overall construction spending, a second month of unseasonably bad construction weather and the usual monthly flip-flop in residential remodeling spending, this time a large increase. Currently the underlying declining trend is likely less than 0.6%/month, probably 0.3-0.5%/month. Later data revisions may restore this trend to the reported data for the last few months. But not next month. February weather was again unseasonably poor for outside construction work. So the next report will likely show another decline in the 0.5-1.05 range plus or minus whatever random change is reported for residential remodeling.

While weather is responsible for the recent string of larger …