Dive Brief:

• Construction begun in October hit an annual pace of $585.6 billion, up 5% over September's rate.
• Residential rose, and three manufacturing plants got started, pulling up the number.
• The Dodge Index climbed to 124, the highest point so far this year after vacillating between 99 and 107 through August.

Dive Insight:

September's starts had jumped 13% from the annual pace in August, also because of some big project starts that McGraw-Hill did not expect to happen every month. The actual value of projects begun from January through October was $433 billion, which was up 4% from the same 10 months of 2012. The figure would have been up 13% if electric utilities were taken out of the mix. McGraw-Hill Chief Economist Robert A. Murray said that even though the big projects skewed the numbers a bit, there still appeared to be a positive trend since summer.