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<\/p>\nNew York City is on\u00a0the verge of\u00a0reinvigorating some of its major transit hubs and building out new rail infrastructure, but an ongoing squeeze on construction labor could derail some of those ambitions.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n MTA employees work in a New York City subway tunnel.\n <\/p>\n
Multibillion-dollar\u00a0infrastructure projects are underway throughout the city, from the Second Avenue subway<\/a> expansion to modernizing John F. Kennedy Airport. But a national shortage of construction workers and competition from\u00a0lower-cost areas across the country could strain labor supply, pushing project costs higher.<\/p>\n \u201cLabor is really a key challenge,\u201d SBI Consultants LLC President Wadji Atallah said\u00a0Thursday\u00a0at Bisnow\u2019s New York Infrastructure, Public-Private Projects and Transportation event. \u201cWe have a real shortage of talent.\u201d<\/p>\n New York and New Jersey have poured billions of dollars into airport renovations<\/a> in recent years, from Newark Liberty International Airport\u2019s $3B Terminal 3 upgrade and LaGuardia International Airport\u2019s $8B makeover to JFK Airport<\/a>\u2019s ongoing $19B transformation.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Gateway Tunnel<\/a>\u00a0project, which is creating a new tunnel between New York and New Jersey and rehabilitating one tunnel in operation since 1910, is projected to cost $17B<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0has restarted<\/a> after a judge ruled against the Trump administration’s withholding of funds for\u00a0the project.\u00a0It is now expected to\u00a0deliver in 2035<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is also the\u00a0Penn Station redevelopment<\/a>, which the Metropolitan Transportation Authority predicts\u00a0will cost $7B<\/a>, and\u00a0as of last year<\/a>, there was a $10B Port Authority Bus Terminal modernization in the works, too.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’re on the precipice of one of the most concentrated periods of capital investment in the region’s history,\u201d Joe Charczenko, partner at advisory firm The Baldwin Group, said onstage at the New York Marriott Marquis.<\/p>\n \n Bisnow\/Chris Picher\n <\/p>\n \n The Baldwin Group’s Joe Charczenko, Partnership for New York City’s Steven Fulop, C.A.C. Industries’ Michael Capasso and Empire State Development’s Hope Knight\n <\/p>\n Within the five boroughs, there is also the long-awaited\u00a0Second Avenue Subway expansion<\/a>, which will extend the Q subway line into East Harlem and Harlem. It is expected to cost $7B and\u00a0deliver by 2032.<\/p>\n And then there is the Interborough Express revival,\u00a0a plan to turn an\u00a0existing 14-mile freight line between Bay Ridge and Jackson Heights into a\u00a0$5.5B\u00a0light rail system<\/a>\u00a0that the state government is\u00a0redesigning<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Infrastructure projects require coordination from government agencies, private capital and the construction industry, Charczenko said. But they are also coming as construction workers<\/a>\u00a0are in short supply.<\/p>\n Demand for construction services means the industry needs to attract 349,000 new workers this year, according to\u00a0a\u00a0January estimate<\/a>\u00a0from trade group Associated Builders and Contractors<\/a>. The industry will need another 456,000 workers in 2027, ABC estimated, citing expected increases in construction spending growth.<\/p>\n \n Bisnow\/Chris Picher\n <\/p>\n \n Grassi\u2019s Carl Oliveri, NYSERDA\u2019s Joshua Plourde, Venable\u2019s Suzanne St. Pierre, SBI Consultants LLC\u2019s Wajdi Atallah, Hudson River Park Trust\u2019s Noreen Doyle and Amazon\u2019s Angela Pinsky\n <\/p>\n Part of the labor supply problem is the construction industry\u2019s reliance on immigrant workers. Around 28% of jobsites reported workforce reductions in the first six months of last year during crackdowns by Immigration and Customs Enforcement,\u00a0according to a survey<\/a>\u00a0from the\u00a0Associated General Contractors of America<\/a>.<\/p>\n But a longer-running issue is also headcount on construction sites, with an aging workforce, early retirements and little appetite among younger generations to enter the profession, civil contractor C.A.C. Industries President and CEO Michael Capasso said.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of these bigger firms, with the data center proliferation across the country and a lot of these other big projects, there’s a shortage of all these trade workers needed,\u201d Capasso said.<\/p>\n The\u00a0surge in data center construction<\/a>\u00a0is\u00a0luring hordes of construction workers to jobsites all over the country with higher wages and bonuses. Between August\u00a02024 and 2025,\u00a0construction jobs<\/a>\u00a0grew the most in some of the states that have seen booms in data construction<\/a>,\u00a0including Texas, Virginia and Ohio, according to another\u00a0AGC survey<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n Bisnow\/Chris Picher\n <\/p>\n \n Clune Construction\u2019s Teddy Kalaboukas, Karp Strategies\u2019 Rebecca Karp, NYC Economic Development Corp.\u2019s Anton Fredriksson, Red Oak Street\u2019s David Garten and MTA Construction and Development\u2019s Miriam Harris\n <\/p>\n \u201cWe read a lot of headlines about high-tax states versus low-tax states,\u201d Capasso said. \u201cYou’re seeing it on the trades-level people, too, where they say, \u2018Well, when I can go work at a data center,\u2019 and they’re overpaying in some other locale with lower personal taxes. We’re losing part of that workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n New York construction labor peaked in 2023 with 396,000 jobs and fell to 385,000 in October,\u00a0according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics<\/a>. But alongside infrastructure spending, private construction has also picked up.\u00a0There\u00a0were 19M SF in new building filings\u00a0in NYC in the fourth quarter, according to the Real Estate Board of New York<\/a>, a 200% increase year-over-year and 50% above the historical average.\u00a0<\/p>\n If\u00a0contractors want to rein in\u00a0cost challenges posed by labor shortages,\u00a0they need to have a more proactive approach, finding younger people interested in entering construction trades, Capasso said.<\/p>\n \u201cEspecially in this market where it’s prevailing wage and heavily union-focused, especially in the public works arena, these are great careers for people to enter with significant pay packages,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n And while construction firms have wagered that\u00a0investing\u00a0in\u00a0artificial intelligence-powered automation<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0robotics\u00a0will lower some of their costs<\/a>,\u00a0technology has its limits, Grassi Construction Practice Leader Carl Oliveri said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAI is not going to be swinging hammers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City is on\u00a0the verge of\u00a0reinvigorating some of its major transit hubs and building out new rail…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[3250,37305,80535,80537,31666,62881,1186,1087,141,9,24,1086,63,80536,28244,4025,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-203520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-associated-builders-and-contractors","10":"tag-associated-general-contractors-of-america","11":"tag-construction-labor","12":"tag-construction-labor-shortage","13":"tag-gateway-tunnel","14":"tag-jfk-airport","15":"tag-laguardia-airport","16":"tag-mta","17":"tag-new-york","18":"tag-new-york-city","19":"tag-newark-airport","20":"tag-nyc","21":"tag-penn-station-redevelopment","22":"tag-port-authority-bus-terminal","23":"tag-second-avenue-subway","24":"tag-staten-island","25":"tag-staten-island-headlines","26":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n