Today the Commerce Department's Bureau of the Census released its report on new construction put in place during July. Overall, new construction in July was 1(+/-5) percent down from June. New residential construction was down by 2(+/-2) percent and private nonresidential building construction fell by 4(+/-3) percent. Public construction in July was 1(+/-5) percent lower than in June.

As is usually the case with this data, the uncertainty in the monthly change is as big or bigger than the number itself. The private nonresidential number this month was an exception. We are able to determine that the value for that indicator fell by something between 1 and 7 percent -- not much help.

The only bit of information in today's report that we can sink our teeth into is the year-to-date number. This is published without any reference to a range of uncertainty. That means that the Bureau is pretty confident about the number. In the first seven months of this year, $310.4 billion in new construction was put into place. This compares with a figure of $302.2 billion for the same period last year.

If the year-to-date number is translated into a yearly number we get an estimate of $532.1 billion in new construction for 1996. That would be less than the 1995 number of $547.1 billion, and would be the first year-to-year decrease since 1990 and 1991, during the last recession. Maybe the economy is not growing as fast as some might think.