Economist Sees No ‘Obvious Driver’ For Cement Growth in 2025

The Market Intelligence team of the newly branded American Cement Association (ACA), formerly Portland Cement Association, projects a third consecutive year of cement shipment declines in 2025, pointing to business and consumer uncertainty, subdued housing markets, weak commercial and waning industrial building activity, plus flat public construction spending levels.

Addressing members at the 2025 IEEE-IAS/PCA Cement Conference in Birmingham, Ala., ACA Regional Forecaster Trevor Stork offered a “fragile” baseline scenario in which U.S. cement shipments drop 1.6% this year, to 99.98 million metric tons (Mt), from 101.57 Mt in 2024 and 107.13 Mt in 2023 – representing 0.6% and 5.25% year-over-year declines.

Although minor, the former figure was notable as 2024 marked only the third year since 1972 when cement consumption fell and single-family housing starts rose compared to prior-year levels. (High inflation and recovery from the dot-com market meltdown were the backdrops for 1975 and 2002, the other years exhibiting cement shipment negatives and single-family housing positives.)

The ACA Market Intelligence team sees milder headwinds in nonresidential building this year than those the market experienced in 2024. In cement consumption terms, year-over-year nonresidential building activity was off 12.5% in 2024 and is poised for a 3.3% decline this year. Data center construction has helped keep the office building segment of the nonresidential market at or just below flat levels since 2023.

In their public construction outlook, Stork and his colleagues note limits of increased Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) funding. The additional dollars the law brought to surface transportation programs have primarily offset the effects of inflation, although measurably higher funding has boosted water resources construction put in place since IIJA’s 2021 passage.

Concurrent with IIJA funding twilight years, state infrastructure outlays are tightening. Consequently, 2025 cement consumption across public construction segments is on track for a 1.5% drop from 2024, when shipments declined 4.5% from the prior year.

For near-term prospects, including slightly better than baseline projections, Stork paints forecast scenarios factoring early tariff resolution versus trade tensions through year end and sustained consumer spending versus pull back amid greater job losses.

OPTIMISTIC SCENARIO

PESSIMISTIC SCENARIO

He is especially tracking consumer spending and cracks in the labor market, noting how consumers a) halt and drive the economy, and b) stop spending in the face of losing their jobs or have reason to fear loss of employment.

Considering economic uncertainty and prospects in major end use construction markets, “There is no obvious driver for cement growth in 2025,” Stork observed. But if uncertainty is the biggest hindrance, he concluded, “it can go away quickly.”