Monthly spending on data center construction in the United States

Description: This only includes work done on-site to construct data center buildings each month, including materials and construction labor. It excludes the cost of IT hardware inside the buildings, like servers and storage, which can account for a large share of total investment. This data is expressed in US dollars, adjusted for inflation. Only private construction is included.
Data source: United States Census Bureau (2026); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Unit: constant 2021 US$
Last updated: 2026-10-02
Next expected update: 2026-12-31
Managed by: Pablo Arriagada and Edouard Mathieu

This indicator shows monthly spending on the physical construction of data center buildings in the United States. It represents the actual value of work done at construction sites each month, including materials, labor, and contractor costs.
This data doesn't include maintenance work, land purchases, or the computer equipment that goes inside data centers (like servers and storage systems). This means it captures only a small part of total data center investment, since IT hardware represents a significant additional cost.
Only privately-owned construction projects are counted. Projects owned by federal, state, or local governments are not included.

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Data centers power a wide range of online services beyond AI, such as streaming services and cloud storage.
The values shown are not seasonally adjusted, meaning they reflect actual monthly spending and typical seasonal patterns, including slower winter construction and busier summer periods.
Recent months are preliminary and are revised as more complete reports arrive. Once a year, the Census Bureau also revises the previous two years of data, and these annual revisions can be substantial.
This indicator is adjusted for inflation using a composite price index that equally weights the producer price indexes (PPIs) for new industrial building and new warehouse building construction — the approach the US Bureau of Economic Analysis adopted for data center construction in its 2025 annual update.

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All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

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Notes on our processing step for this indicator

We adjusted for inflation using a composite price index that equally weights the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' producer price indexes (PPIs) for new industrial building and new warehouse building construction, each rebased so that its 2021 annual average = 100. This follows the approach the US Bureau of Economic Analysis adopted for data center construction in its 2025 annual update.

Data sources

United States Census Bureau – Value of Private Construction Put in Place

Monthly construction spending data for private construction in the United States, broken down by construction type. The dataset includes datacenter construction spending measured as not seasonally adjusted monthly values in millions of dollars.

Estimates for private nonresidential categories such as data centers and offices come from the Construction Progress Reporting Survey (CPRS), in which owners of sampled construction projects (drawn from Dodge Data & Analytics project lists) report the value of work done each month until completion. Estimates include materials, labor, architectural and engineering costs, overhead, interest and taxes paid during construction, and contractor's profits.

Retrieved on

October 2, 2026

Retrieved from

https://www.census.gov/construction/c30/historical_data.html

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data.

U.S. Census Bureau, Value of Construction Put in Place Survey (VIP), Private Construction Spending Time Series

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics – US PPI New Nonresidential Building Construction

Producer price indexes (PPIs) for new nonresidential building construction in the United States, covering new office, new warehouse, and new industrial building construction.

BLS uses a method in which building models are developed and specified to represent the buildings being constructed in the marketplace. Multiple models were developed for each building type to accommodate variations in building design. The building models are described as a series of unique production elements or "assemblies" in BLS terminology. Each building assembly represents a building construction activity that can be fully defined as a unique portion of the total project. Each assembly is made up of unit-price components that define the specific type and quantity of materials, labor, and equipment necessary for the assembly's installation.

A professional cost-estimating firm developed the building models under BLS direction. To achieve an output price, BLS combines the detailed material and installation (labor and related equipment) cost data, which are updated quarterly by the cost-estimating firm, with margin (overhead and profit) data collected monthly by BLS directly from building construction contractors. BLS aggregates output price changes captured at the assembly level each month to represent the changes in output prices for the total structure. Therefore, the BLS output indexes attempt to measure changes in the input costs for these structures, along with changes in contractor markups.

Retrieved on

October 2, 2026

Retrieved from

https://www.bls.gov/ppi/factsheets/producer-price-index-data-for-nonresidential-building-construction-sector-new-office-building-construction-naics-236223.htm

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

How to cite

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Monthly spending on data center construction in the United States”, part of the following publication: Edouard Mathieu, Charlie Giattino, Veronika Samborska, and Max Roser (2023) - “Artificial Intelligence”. Data adapted from United States Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261002-144754/grapher/monthly-spending-data-center-us.html [online resource] (archived on October 2, 2026).

How to cite this data

If you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

United States Census Bureau (2026); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

United States Census Bureau (2026); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Monthly spending on data center construction in the United States – US Census Bureau” [dataset]. United States Census Bureau, “Value of Private Construction Put in Place”; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “US PPI New Nonresidential Building Construction” [original data]. Retrieved October 2, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261002-144754/grapher/monthly-spending-data-center-us.html (archived on October 2, 2026).

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