Census Bureau News: Business Spending on Fixed Assets Rises to $1.36 Trillion in 2007.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. businesses spent $1.36 trillion on new and used structures and equipment in 2007, of which $1.28 trillion, or 93.7 percent, was spent on new structures and equipment, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

These findings come from the 2007 Annual Capital Expenditures Survey, which measures spending on new and used structures and equipment for businesses with and without paid employees.

Expenditures for new and used structures totaled $529.3 billion, an increase of $40.1 billion from 2006. Of that total, 91.5 percent was spent on new structures. Expenditures for new and used equipment totaled $832.3 billion, 95.2 percent of which went to new equipment.

Companies with employees accounted for $1.28 trillion, or 93.8 percent, of total capital spending in 2007, a 5 percent increase from 2006. These companies spent $494.8 billion on structures, a 9 percent increase from 2006, and $782.6 billion on equipment, a 2.5 percent increase from 2006.

Companies without employees accounted for $84.2 billion in capital spending in 2007, a decrease of $8.6 billion, or 9.3 percent, from 2006; $34.5 billion went to structures and $49.7 billion to equipment.

Sector and industry highlights:

* The information sector spent $105.3 billion on capital goods in 2007, not statistically different from 2006. Of that amount, $28.6 billion went for structures and $76.7 billion for equipment. The leading industry spenders in the sector were wired telecommunications carriers at $35.2 billion, an increase of 9.5 percent from 2006; wireless telecommunications carriers at $22.2 billion, a decrease of 20.5 percent; and cable and other program distribution at $18.6 billion, an increase of 10.1 percent from 2006.

* The utilities sector spent $83.6 billion on capital goods in 2007, an increase of 19.9 percent from 2006. The leading spender in the sector was the electric power generation, transmission, and distribution industry at $72.2 billion, an increase of 20.3 percent. The natural gas distributors industry spent $8.6 billion, up 21.9 percent from the prior year.

* The construction sector spent $36.7 billion for capital goods, a 21.4 percent increase from 2006. The leading spenders were the special trade contractors industry at $21.3 billion, a 50.9 percent increase, and the heavy and civil engineering construction industry at $9.8 billion, not statistically different from 2006.

* The mining sector spent $121.7 billion on capital goods in 2007, an increase of 22.6 percent from 2006. Spending for structures totaled $86.2 billion and spending for equipment totaled $35.5 billion. The oil and gas extraction industry spent $94.0 billion, a 24.5 percent increase from 2006, and accounted for 77.2 percent of the sector's overall capital spending.

* Health care and social assistance sectors spent 83.8 billion for structures and equipment in 2007, up 11.2 percent from 2006. The leading spender in this sector was general medical and surgical hospitals at $48.8 billion, up 12.4 percent from 2006. The second largest contributor to spending was the nursing and residential care facilities industry at $9.3 billion, not statistically different from 2006.

The estimates in this report are based on a stratified random sample of about 46,000 companies with employees and about 15,000 companies without employees. Responding firms account for about 92.1 percent of the total capital expenditures estimate. Statistical adjustments are applied to account for non-responding firms in the final estimates.

Because the estimates presented in this report are based on a sample survey, they are subject to sampling variability and nonsampling errors including errors of response, nonreporting and coverage. Estimated measures of sampling error have been calculated for each estimate and are used to construct 90-percent confidence intervals (or ranges) for all estimates of change. If a range contains zero (0), then it is uncertain whether there was an increase or a decrease; that is, the current estimate is not statistically different from the prior estimate at the 90-percent confidence level. More details concerning survey design, methodology and data limitations are provided in the full report, which is available online at http://www.census.gov/csd/ace/.