Construction Trend Tuesday covers one (hopefully) interesting industry trend in a quick, two-minute read. You can access the archive of CTT posts here.
Manufacturing construction boomed starting in mid-2021, peaked in mid-2024, and has been falling ever since as CHIPS Act-incentivized megaprojects wind down (plus a few other headwinds).
We’ve written about that a lot. What we haven’t written about is where those projects are—and maybe more importantly are not—happening. Thanks to new experimental Census Bureau data, it’s time for that to change.
Manufacturing construction spending by region
For reference, here are the states in each Census region.
Looking at manufacturing construction spending by region, we see that the majority of the boom (about 56% from start to peak) occurred in the South. Another 29% occurred in the West and 18% in Midwest, while manufacturing construction spending actually fell in the northeast over that span.
All three of the South’s divisions boomed during this span, though to a less extent in the east south central than the other parts of the region.
Note that some of these divisions are particularly sprawling (especially the South Atlantic). Safe to say that manufacturing activity surged in states like Georgia and the Carolinas while staying pretty lifeless in the northern parts of that division.
The West’s mountain division attracted a ton of manufacturing investment during this period (especially Arizona), while the West’s Pacific division attracted virtually none.
The Midwest is unique in that, unlike other booming regions, it hasn’t seen a sharp drawdown over the past few years. Some of this continued strength is due to projects like a $7 billion Eli Lilly plant in Indiana or a massive but long delayed $20 billion Intel plant in Ohio.
As you can see, the boom didn’t really happen in the western Midwest (though that part of the country has seen a steady uptick in manufacturing investment), with the megaprojects heavily concentrated in the eastern Midwest.
The Northeast, which didn’t see a boom at all during that initial period, has experienced a massive uptick in activity the past two months (July and August 2026). Chalk that up to the $100b Micron plant in Clay, New York that got underway in July. New England is still sitting this one out entirely.
What’s Next
On Thursday, we’ll have a piece out about the broader economy (topic TBD, maybe election stuff?).
After that, it’s Week in Review, our every-Friday post that covers all the economic news and data in a breezy, five minute read.
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