Building construction investment rises 12 percent in June
They're not there yet, but building construction investment levels are approaching pre-pandemic levels.
Statistics Canada’s latest report on the metric shows an increase of 12 percent in investment values in June. This follows an increase of more than 62 percent in May. June’s $14.9-billion total is 3.1 percent lower than the figure recorded in February—the last full pre-pandemic month on record. June is also the first month in which construction sites across the country were back to nearly full capacity.
Statistics Canada reports that investment in residential construction rose 12.2 percent to $9.4 billion in June, with gains in both single-unit (+13.0 percent to $4.7 billion) and multi-unit (+11.4 percent to $4.7 billion) investment. Ontario and Quebec led all provinces in growth, while Saskatchewan was the only province to report a decline. Nationally, after back-to-back months of strong gains, residential investment still remained 8.6 percent lower than February 2020 levels.
Meanwhile, non-residential construction investment increased 11.6 percent to $5.5 billion in June. Strong gains in Ontario and Quebec led to national growth in all components of non-residential investment, outweighing declines reported in all other provinces for the month.
With the strong increase in non-residential construction in June, investment for all three components is now somewhat higher than the levels recorded before COVID-19 restrictions were put in place.
The commercial component represented the majority of non-residential construction gains, up 14.7 percent to $3.3 billion, with notable increases in Ontario and Quebec. The industrial (+7.7 percent) and institutional (+6.6 percent) sectors also increased in June, supported by strong gains in Ontario and Quebec.
Second quarter of 2020 down sharply
Public health measures put in place to slow the spread of COVID-19 severely impacted the construction industry in the second quarter. Total investment in building construction amounted to $36.3 billion, a decrease of 20 percent (-$9.1 billion) compared with the first quarter. This is by far the largest quarter-over-quarter decrease since January 2010, when comparable data were first available.
All provinces and territories were down for the quarter, with Ontario (-$3.4 billion) and Quebec (-$3.2 billion) posting the largest declines. This represented a record quarter-over-quarter decrease for both provinces.
Residential investment fell in the second quarter, down 24.5 percent to $23 billion, with both investment in multi-unit dwellings (-22.6 percent) and single-unit dwellings (-26.4 percent) posting sharp declines.
Non-residential investment decreased quarter over quarter, down 10.7 percent to $13.4 billion. Declines were reported across all provinces and territories, with the largest in Ontario.