Construction Trend Tuesday

Input prices go up

Construction Trend Tuesday covers one (hopefully) interesting industry trend in a quick, two minute read. You can access the archive of CTT posts here. If you’d like to sponsor CTT posts, just respond to this email or drop us a comment.

Construction input prices blasted off during the pandemic, rising 45% from February 2020 to June 2022. This was, obviously, not good for the industry and led to fewer projects and smaller contractor profit margins.

Then supply chains smoothed out and, from June 2022 to the end of 2024, materials prices actually fell, declining about 5% over that 2.5 year span.

That period of well-behaved prices looks to be over. Materials prices are up 1.8% during the first two months of 2025 and, if that pace continues, will rise 9.0% for the year.

And that pace will continue, or accelerate, if tariffs remain in place—2025 is shaping up to be a bad year for construction input affordability.

What’s Next

We’re working on another piece on the tariffs. You can read our initial 31 Thoughts on Tariffs here.

We’ll send out our every-Friday Week in Review post on—you guessed it—Friday. Week in Review covers all the economic news and data in a breezy, five minute read.

Week in Review is only for paying subscribers. If that’s not you and you want it to be, just click the subscribe button.