Mining

Among the 19 major industry sectors, mining tallied the fastest percentage growth in total structures and equipment spending, up from $30.6 billion in 1999 to $66.8 billion in 2005—an increase of 118.5 percent. (Table 3a, in report)

Manufacturing

Table 2 shows that manufacturing’s share of total investment declined from 20.2 percent in 1999 to 15.5 percent in 2005. Durable goods industries accounted for more than two-thirds of the overall decline. The table also shows that, among the 19 major industry sectors, manufacturing alone experienced a declining share of total capital spending in every year from 2000 to 2005—a period during which overall capital spending first declined (2001-2003) and then recovered (2004-2005). (Estimated year-to-year differences in the manufacturing share of total annual business investment are statistically significant only for 2000-2001, 2001-2002 and 2004-2005.)

Information

Table 2 and Figure 4 show that between 2000 and 2002, the information sector’s share of total capital spending fell sharply (from 14.7 percent to 9.6 percent), then continued to decline, though to a lesser extent, in the period 2003-2005.

Health care and social assistance

Table 3a shows that, among the 19 major industry sectors, health care and social assistance alone increased capital spending in absolute terms in every year between 1999 and 2005. Between 1999 and 2005, capital spending in this sector increased from $51.3 billion to $73.8 billion. (Estimated year-to-year differences in annual capital expenditures in the health care and social assistance sector are statistically significant only for 2001-2002 and 2004-2005.)