While respondents to this year’s Pipe Trades Giants survey say that more of their business in 2012 was commercial and industrial rather than residential, 56% of them report an increase in revenue from 2011. Yet the U.S. Census Bureau reports that public construction such as education, sewage/waste disposal and water supply were down last year. Health-care construction was up by 4.1% from 2011.
Education and health-care construction spending are down for the first five months this year, the Census Bureau reports, but sewage/waste disposal and water supply show increases this year — 2.7% and 9.9%, respectively.