AASHTO Journal, 26 April 2013
Transportation construction contributes $354 billion in annual U.S. economic activity, according to a report released this week by the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, which amounts to the equivalent of 2.25 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product.
Alison Premo Black, ARTBA chief economist and author of the report, found that the annual value of transportation construction amounted to almost $120 billion, beating out industries such as health care, mining, and textile and clothing manufacturing.
The report also asserts that transportation construction across the nation supports almost 3.5 million jobs (1,741,800 of which are direct jobs).
“To put the industry’s impact on U.S. employment in context, it directly provides more American jobs than direct employment by the nation’s colleges and universities (1,674,984 employees), nursing care facilities (1,613,630), commercial banking (1,560,061), real estate (1,445,435), hotels (1,391,932), building construction (1,290,849), accounting services (1,289,005), law offices (1,096,617), machinery manufacturing (1,033,961) and new car dealers (940,917), among others,” according to the report.
Figures in the report also show that California stands as the state with both the highest transportation construction payroll (at about $5.9 billion) and transportation construction employment (348,024 jobs). Texas, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, and Virginia are also in the top 10 of both of those lists, while Washington State rounds out the top 10 in the payroll category and Georgia is ranked in the top 10 list for employment.
The 99-page report, “The U.S. Transportation Construction Industry Profile,” is available here. Analysis of all individual states is available at ARTBA’s newly launched statistics site, located at TransportationCreatesJobs.org.