This series of posts based on Census of Governments state and local government employment and payroll data for March 2017 (and 2007 and 1997) continues with a post on infrastructure functions: highways and streets, mass transit, air transportation, water transportation, government-run electric and gas utilities, water supply, sewerage, and solid waste management. Along with related private sector activity. When I joined New York City Transit out of graduate school in 1986, I was told it was the largest industrial/blue collar employer in New York City. It probably still is, with the other functions described adding as many blue collar jobs, and jobs with contractors many more.
In the past 10 years or so, subway riders have experienced a drastic decrease in their quality of life despite rising fares, relative to the very low inflation of the period. This is something I have attributed to costs from the past – the big pension increase in 2000, with huge costs deferred until later, and decades of zero state and city funding for the MTA capital plan, with money borrowed instead. But after reviewing the data for these functions, I have begun to wonder if even worse is coming. And not just at the MTA. But we will have water!
Saying the Unsaid in New York 