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Transportation jobs growing at a faster rate than the whole NYC economy combined – Metro US

Transportation jobs growing at a faster rate than the whole NYC economy combined

Transportation jobs growing at a faster rate than the whole NYC economy
MTA/Creative Commons

Transportation-sector job growth ranked among the fastest-growing in NYC in the last five years, according to a report from the Center For An Urban Future.

The rate of growth in the Transportation and Warehouse sector from 2010 to 2015 was 12.4 percent (about 12,000 jobs for a total of 112,000), exceeding the overall growth of the city’s economy of 9.4 percent over the same period.

What’s remarkable is that while a lot of the economy’s expansion is in the food services and home-healthcare sectors, those jobs are often low-paying and part-time, while the transportation jobs provide many full-time roles that earn a very livable average annual salaryof $53,417, the center notes.

“These are middle-class jobs,” Jonathan Bowles, the center’s executive director. “They are giving people an entry point to the middle class.”

This includes jobs from sub-sectors such as ground and transit—bus drivers, subway operators, bus mechanics—and air transportation, such as airline desk personnel, pilots, flight attendants, people washing the planes.

And people in the water transportation sub-sector, such as cruise-ship captains and ferry operators, could earnupwards of the average $104,000 a year, according to the center.

“In the last two years it’s really been exploding” Bowles said, adding that this part of the industry had gradually grown in the last 10-15 years but the growth has been extraordinary since 2013.

“There 8.5 million people in this city and climbing. There are more people to move around this city and that has led to real job growth, as there have been more trains and busses, more couriers and messengers as the economy expanded,” Bowles said.

“It’s one of those things the city should consider to nurture,” Bowles said, referencing Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ferry expansion initiatives. “It provides good paying jobs that don’t require a college or graduate degree.”