When put in the proper context, residential construction has made considerable progress in recent years.

The Census Bureau’s latest report on construction spending came out earlier today, and it represented what appeared to be more of the same – total spending was up 0.4 percent from August to September, closing out the month at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $950.9 billion; the first nine months of 2014, spending has amounted to $710.1 billion, which is 6.1 percent above the same period in 2013.

Though the Census Bureau’s initial report does highlight residential construction spending – it was up 0.4 percent from August, and just 0.7 percent from Sept. 2014 – we found that quite lacking in terms of what’s actually going on in residential construction, so we dug a bit deeper into the Census Bureau’s historical information and put together the following graphs, which show clear progress for construction: