Wednesday, June 22, 2011

AIA ABI Index for May 2011 retreats further into negative territory and is again below 50

According to a brief post I found on the “calculatedrisk” blog (which attributed the information in its post to information it found in the Wall Street Journal), the AIA ABI (Architecture Billing) Index reading for May 2011 was 47.2.

That’s bad news for the A/E/C Industry, and that’s bad news for reprographers.

According to the AIA, there is an "approximate nine to twelve month lag time between architecture billings and construction spending" on non-residential construction. So this suggests another dip in CRE (commercial real estate) investment towards the end of this year - and into 2012.

On its web-site, the AIA publishes the schedule for its monthly press releases of the ABI Index reading. This month’s press release was supposed to be issued on June 22nd, which, of course, is today. But, when I visited the AIA’s web-site this morning, I did not find a June 22 Press Release about the ABI Index reading for May

Apparently, the AIA’s habit is to issue Press Releases (about the ABI Index) to major news services, in advance of posting the Press Releases on its web-site. I would imagine that’s how the Wall Street Journal already knows what the May 2011 ABI Index reading was. When I visited Reuter’s web-site this morning, I did not see where Reuter’s has yet posted anything about the May 2011 Index reading.

AIA ABI Index, recent “readings”:

47.2 – May 2011

47.6 – April 2011

50.5 – March 2011

50.6 – February 2011

50.0 – January 2011

54.2 – December 2010

52.0 – November 2010

48.7 – October 2010

50.4 – September 2010

Prior to September 2010, the ABI Index had not been at 50 or above since December 2007.

No comments:

Post a Comment