The Preconomist

On February 28, the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran. Within days, Iranian forces declared the Strait of Hormuz closed and began attacking commercial shipping. Brent crude opened that week at nearly $71 per barrel and briefly broke $100. This represented a 51% one-month gain, the second largest since futures trading began in 1983. Emergency policy measures partially walked that back, with Brent settling in the $92–105 range through late March. Gas prices crossed $4 per gallon nationally. The Strait carries roughly 20 million barrels per day, or about 27% of global maritime oil trade. When it shuts, there is no short-term substitute. Why should construction professionals be focused on something other than gas prices? Because gasoline is not a construction input. Diesel is. The two are not affected equally by this disruption. Refineries optimized for Gulf production run on light-sweet crude. When that feedstock disappears, they face a choice: substitute heavier c...

 The Middle East conflict dominates financial headlines, but for construction owners and developers the story arrives through different channels. It is material quotes, freight surcharges, and lead time notices. Energy prices are not background noise. They are embedded in the petrochemical feedstocks that become piping, insulation, roofing membrane, and sealants. When crude prices spike, construction budgets feel it but not immediately, and not all at once. They are felt with a persistence that outlasts the headlines.   The critical question for owners and developers is not whether this conflict affects their projects. It does. The question is how much and for how long. That depends almost entirely on how the conflict resolves. Before we examine the implications, three historical episodes offer important context: the Gulf War of 1990-1991, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Figures 1, 2, and 3 track crude petroleum, diesel fuel, and plast...

Input costs are running faster than bid prices. The Iran energy shock isn't in the data yet. And the commodity markets are already telling us where the next PPI reading is headed.     The 3.7% year-over-year input number looks manageable. What's the real story? The year-over-year framing obscures the pace. Through just two months, construction input costs are running at a 12.6% annualized rate. That pace was set before the Iran conflict moved oil toward $100 per barrel. There is also a diesel tailwind embedded in the February headline that is already obsolete by the time you are reading this. The PPI has a hard measurement cutoff. The commodity markets do not. The table below reflects what is already in motion, a preview of where the next PPI reading is heading, not a refinement of this one.   Diesel up 36.7% in a single month is the Iran war arriving in energy prices in real time. The February PPI still shows diesel as a tailwind. That tailwind is gone. PVC at ...

The February Construction Backlog Indicator says the market is stable. The data underneath says something more complicated. The headline backlog number is up from January. Isn’t that good news? Technically, yes. Directionally, it depends on where you're standing. ABC's Construction Backlog Indicator (CBI) rose to 8.1 months in February, up 0.1 from January, but context matters here. January's reading was a four-year low. You don't pop champagne because you climbed off the floor. When you look at the year-over-year picture, backlog is down 0.2 months from February 2025. The correct read isn't that "the market is growing", but rather it's "the market stopped falling, for now." This is a meaningful distinction if you're budgeting, hiring, or bidding work in 2026. So is this still a "yellow light" market? Yes. February's data makes that case more precisely than January did. The headline number is steady enough to fee...

  The February jobs report dropped Friday and the headline was ugly. Nonfarm payrolls fell 92,000, the third loss in five months, against a consensus expectation of a 50,000 gain. Not a miss. A reversal. Markets flinched. Commentators called it a warning sign. What does it mean for construction? Start with the construction number, because it's the one most likely to mislead you. The industry shed 11,000 jobs in February after adding 48,000 in January. Taken in isolation, that looks like a reversal. It isn't. That January spike was almost certainly a weather artifact, an unusually mild stretch pulled forward activity, and February paid it back. The two months together average roughly +18,500/month, which is consistent with a sector that's been grinding forward on a narrow base of healthcare, pharma, and data center demand. Don't read the February construction number as a leading indicator of project pipeline softening. Read it as noise. So if the construction job l...

  If you feel like you're running up a down escalator, you aren't imagining it. While mainstream headlines often fixate on nominal dollar records in the broader economy, those of us in preconstruction see a different math. Yesterday's Census Bureau release for December 2025 spending data (finally out after the federal delays) tells a story of a sector that isn't just stalled; it's effectively shrinking when adjusted for the cost of doing business. The Census Bureau noted a 0.3% increase year-over-year in nonresidential spending. When adjusted for escalation, that figure becomes a -3.8% decrease in real spending year-over-year. How long has this been trending downward? We have now hit a somber milestone: overall nonresidential spending, when measured in real dollars, has declined year-over-year for 15 consecutive months. This marks every month since October 2024. In 2023, the industry saw a massive surge that outpaced inflation. But since late 2024, the script ...

  Valentine’s Day is an expensive holiday. While some joke that greeting card companies invented the day to juice profit margins, the current cost of a gift is no laughing matter. Gold prices are hovering near record highs (a topic for a future post), but that heart-shaped box of chocolate will cost you roughly 231% more than it did four years ago. What is driving this "Cocoa-nomics" crisis? To understand the price spike, you need to look at West Africa. Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana produce roughly 60% to 70% of the world’s cocoa. Over the last two years, this region was hammered by record-breaking rains that rotted pods on the trees, followed by a brutal El Niño-driven drought. The 2023/2024 season saw production plunge by 25%, leading to the lowest global yields in decades. This was compounded by a massive spike in production costs. Following geopolitical tensions in 2022, fertilizer prices skyrocketed as Russia and Belarus, two top exporters, were largely sidelined. Many ...