As of March 2017, there were close to 7 million people employed in the U.S. construction industry, up from 5.5 million in 2010. During that same time, public and private construction spending has rebounded by nearly half a trillion dollars after the impact of the Great Recession.
With the construction industry growing again, CareerTrends, a career research data site by Graphiq, set out to find the best-paying places for construction laborers. To do this, they used 2016 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and found the 50 U.S. metros that pay construction laborers the most money. Looking at all metropolitan areas (as defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget), they ranked locales by their average salaries. Only places that pay their construction laborers an average of $37,890 a year or more -- the average salary for this position across the nation -- were included in the ranking. When ties occur, metros are ranked by the total number of construction laborers.
Massachusetts metros appear on the list 13 times -- the most of any state. While some locales' average salaries are less than 15 percent above the national average, construction laborers in the No. 1 metro make almost 45 percent more.
Note: The salaries are not adjusted for the cost of living in each metro. CareerTrends did not consider all occupations within the construction industry, only workers classified as "construction laborers" by the BLS.
