Construction cost intelligence, decoded
The state of construction costs, top to bottom.
The macro picture first: demand, inputs, bid prices, financing. Then dial it into your project. Free. Sourced. Every assumption shown.
Barnsley fern: four affine maps, iterated 3,600×. A plant that is literally a fractal. Cost behaves the same way: self-similar, recursive, dilution all the way down.
- Construction inflation
- +3.4% y/y
- PPI final demand, private · May 2026
- Building types
- +2.5% to +4.1%
- office · warehouse · school · industrial, y/y
- Hottest input
- +105.9% y/y
- Diesel fuel (PPI)
- Construction labor
- +4.3% y/y
- avg hourly earnings · Jun 2026
- 10-yr Treasury
- 4.48%
- daily · Jul 2026
The ladder below reads the way a shock travels: demand sets the field, inputs move first, bid prices absorb what shares and margins let through, and financing decides what gets built at all. Sources: BLS, Census, EIA, and the Federal Reserve via the Fern data pipeline.
Layer 01 · Demand
Is the pipeline hot?
Housing starts are down 8.7% year over year, permits flat 0.4%, and total spending down 1.5%. The pipeline is cooling: expect sharper bid competition and softer margins on the work that remains.
- Housing starts
- 1,177k
- SAAR · May 2026
- Building permits
- 1,410k
- SAAR · May 2026
- Total spending
- $2.21T
- SAAR · May 2026
Layer 02 · Inputs
What moved first?
Energy is the loudest driver: retail diesel is up 23.7% year over year, and it rides along in every delivered price. Hottest input: diesel fuel (ppi), +105.9% year over year. Coolest: gypsum products, -0.7%.
Average hourly earnings are up 4.3% year over year with employment up 0.8%. Labor is roughly half of installed cost, so this floor moves every trade.
- WTI crude
- $71.87
- per bbl · +7.8% y/y
- Retail diesel
- $4.67
- per gal · +23.7% y/y
- Henry Hub gas
- $3.33
- per MMBtu · +3.1% y/y
| Input | 1 yr | 30 day | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diesel fuel (PPI) | +105.9% | +19.9% | |
| Copper and brass shapes | +42.5% | +7.1% | |
| Aluminum mill shapes | +33.5% | +14.3% | |
| Flat glass | +8.1% | +0.0% | |
| Asphalt paving mixtures | +7.0% | +4.7% | |
| Steel mill products | +6.7% | +2.1% | |
| Softwood lumber | +4.8% | +0.6% | |
| Construction machinery | +3.5% | +0.2% | |
| Plastic construction products | +3.3% | +2.5% | |
| Cement | -0.6% | -0.0% | |
| Gypsum products | -0.7% | 0.0% |
Layer 03 · Bid prices
What buyers actually pay.
Buyers are paying +3.4% year over year for private nonresidential work and +3.7% for government work. Note the gap: the hottest input is running 105.9% while bid prices move 3.4%. Shares and margins dilute a shock on its way to the bid line. These are selling-price indices: contractor margins included, which is why they move slower and later than the commodities above.
Layer 04 · Financing
The hurdle rate.
The 10-year Treasury sits at 4.48%, roughly flat over the past month. It is the hurdle rate every pro forma clears before a project ever reaches an estimator.
Now dial it in
What this means for your project.
Current trailing escalation by project type, from the selling-price indices above. The calculator compounds these to your construction midpoint with error bands measured by backtest, not asserted.
The Quarterly
July 2026: the full narrative behind these numbers, with the work shown.
The Pulse
Shocks in motion: leading signals, long-lead items, and stress-test scenarios.
Methodology
Seven principles, every source, and the model's measured accuracy, including where it loses.
About Fern
Why this exists, what it publishes, and what it refuses to do.