HIGHLIGHTS
- Data center construction spending passed office spending for the first time in December 2025, crossing at roughly $3.5B monthly.
- Office construction has fallen ~35% from its 2020 peak.
- Data center spend is up 5x since 2020, with the curve steepening sharply in late 2024.
- The Census figures exclude racks and servers, so this is structural construction only, making the crossover a measure of physical footprint, not equipment spend.
Data center spending in the U.S. just crossed over office construction spending. Granted, office construction spending has been declining for years — down roughly 35% from its 2020 peak — but data center construction is up 5x over the same period.
The Census data excludes racks and servers, so this is purely structural construction: concrete, steel, power infrastructure, cooling systems, etc. That makes the numbers more meaningful, not less. The physical footprint of AI compute is now larger than the physical footprint of white-collar office work, at least as measured by monthly construction spending.
The acceleration in the back half of 2024 and into 2025 is impressive. The curve isn't linear: it steepened sharply as hyperscaler capex commitments made in 2023 and early 2024 translated into actual ground-breaking.
The office line, meanwhile, has no obvious bottom. Remote and hybrid work permanently destroyed a layer of demand that is not coming back. And AI is changing the shape and scope of future white-collar work. Capital is really and truly replacing labor, in multiple ways.