Construction has a boom quarter (in WA)

The ABS has released its Construction Work Done report for the March quarter this morning and the result is a good one up 5.5% versus a market consensus of 3%. Some of that gloss was taken off by a downwards revision to the December quarter of 1.2% to 3.4%.

There is no real surprise about where the growth driver was. While weakness in the broader economy and the ongoing wind down of government spending hit building hard, engineering work, which includes all of those major mining and associated infrastructure projects boomed:

By state, construction work leapt 38.8% in WA, but declined in all other states.

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.