I’m a guy who — sad as this is for what it says about my social life in middle-age — is genuinely interested in the US government’s monthly update on new residential construction.

I didn’t see that for myself. From catering local stimulant parties and disrupting graduate seminars with inebriated, but cogent, rants about the peril of metricizing the social sciences, to refreshing census.gov at 8:30 AM for the latest HUD data. All in the short space of 15 years. And people wonder why I’m depressed.

Most people, though, couldn’t care less about this release. I have data to back up that assertion. Suffice to say coverage of housing starts and permits isn’t the first thing readers click on when they visit the site — unless I tempt them with a headline that promises to document a “plunge” or a “crash.”

Luckily for me on that score, housing starts did indeed plunge and crash in the US last month, and no, that isn’t hyperbole. The drop in overall new construction was 15.4% from April. That was “Juuuuust a bit outside” vis-à-vis consensus, which expected a 2% decline.

I should emphasize: May’s result looks even worse when you consider that April’s figures were revised to reflect a decline nearly triple the initially-reported drop.

Blame apartments. Multi-family construction showed a 40% drop. Single-family starts fell as well, although May’s drop, 1.9%, was much shallower than the prior month’s 11% decline.

The figure below shows you the disparity between the six-year low for the overall annualized rate and the pace for single-family construction.

For whatever this is worth, the decline on the “five units or more” series, a stunning 41.5%, was among the seven largest ever in data back to 1959.

Permits slipped in aggregate, but managed a slight gain for single-family units.

The figures come on the heels of yet another abysmal read on builder sentiment, which printed in “depressed” territory for the 26th consecutive month in June’s NAHB survey.

Builders this month complained that politicians are preventing them from meeting America’s demand for new housing. Tuesday’s government figures, with the usual caveat to account for how volatile this series is, don’t bode especially well for new supply.