The Portland Cement Association (PCA) Market Intelligence team released its May 2024 Executive Summary, which highlighted recently released state forecasts, housing deficit analysis, and more.
The spring 2024 outlooks included demographics, key construction indicators as well as put-in-place (PIP) construction spending and cement consumption. The forecasts included projections of 16 PIP categories and 18 for cement. An alternate forecast scenario was also released for Texas based on the Texas Comptroller figures.
The association released a special report analyzing the housing deficit currently facing the country. Strong demand for housing in recent years, coupled with an influx of first time millennial-aged home buyers has put the spotlight on below trend home building since the Great Recession. The result is a deficit of housing across the country. PCA’s analysis examines the extent of this issue state-by-state and creates a ‘Housing Imbalance Ranking’ to compare the issue across regions. The report details some of the barriers to increasing stock and summarizes the implications of the deficit for future residential construction activity.
PCA Market Intelligence also released the “Survey of Portland Cement Consumption by User Group” for the fourth quarter of 2023. This quarterly survey reported on the quantity of cement consumed by 18 different user segments. An analysis and data summary are provided for each segment containing quarterly information regarding quantity, regional distributions, and forecast projections.
In the fourth quarter, there was a decrease of 1.9% in cement consumption compared to the prior-year period. The Streets & Highways Contractors and Precast segments saw some of the highest volume growth in the quarter compared to Q4 2022 at 4.8% and 28.5%, respectively. The Brick & Block/Manufactured Stone and Packaged Product Producers segments saw sizeable decreases during the quarter of 14.5% and 12.2%, respectively.
Lastly, PCA Market Intelligence added state-level, portland-limestone cement (PLC) consumption data to its monthly Monitor report. The April U.S. Monitor was released featuring cement data through January 2024, showing a year-to-date decrease of 14.5% in total consumption. The U.S. Monitor also provided further insight into the construction put-in-place trends with total construction seeing an increase of 5.4% in January compared to a year prior.
