NEW YORK CITY-The outer boroughs may now house employees from newer employment sectors like technology and media, but members of the old guard reside there too.
So says new research from the New York Building Congress, which analyzed the US Census bureau data and discovered that about 70% of the 185,233 New York City residents employed by the construction industry hailed from Queens and Brooklyn in 2012.
As of 2012—the most recent year for which data is available—70,809 Queens residents (38.2% of the total) and 59,027 Brooklyn residents (31.9%) held jobs in the construction industry. The Bronx placed third on the list with 26,668 workers (14.4%), followed by Staten Island with 14,860 workers (8%) and Manhattan with 13,869 (7.5%).
Overall, the number of New York City residents employed in the construction industry rose 3% from the 179,814 residents who were employed by the industry in 2011.
“We are encouraged to see a 3% increase in the number of New York City residents actively employed in the construction industry,” says New York Building Congress president Richard Anderson. Still, he issues a note of caution.
“It is worth noting that, even after this 2012 increase, the industry in 2012 employed nearly 28,000 less workers than it did in 2007. Our hope and expectation is that most, if not all, of these lost jobs will be recaptured as part of a rising construction market between 2013 and 2015.”
The median earnings for New York City construction workers rose 2.4%—going from $31,416 in 2011 to $32,155 in 2012—after adjusting for inflation. By comparison, the median earnings for all New Yorkers dropped by 1%, to $36,811 in 2012.
The construction trades and other occupations directly involved in construction operations accounted for 82% of the industry workforce. The rest of the workforce consisted of white-collar jobs, such as management and sales, as well as service occupations, such as security officers and maintenance workers.
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Rayna Katz
Rayna Katz is a seasoned business journalist whose extensive experience includes coverage of the lodging sector, travel and the culinary space. She was most recently content director for a business-to-business publisher, overseeing four publications. While at Meeting News, a travel trade publication, she received a Best Reporting award for a story on meeting cancellations in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
