Today, good news that bears trumpeting: New York is experiencing its biggest building boom in many decades. All across the city, projects large and small are renewing neighborhoods and creating jobs at stunning rates.

The surge is so large that every sector of construction - from housing to commercial buildings to public works - is growing in all five boroughs, a phenomenon not seen since the 1920s, before the Great Depression, when the original Yankee Stadium went up and ground was broken for the IND subway.

There's enough work to keep 120,000 hardhats toiling away, up by about 20,000 since 1998. The vast majority of this labor force is unionized and lives in the city. Its members get paid well, averaging $50,000 in salary with solid benefits, and they return more than $1 billion in income taxes a year to state and city coffers.

With additional growth, the demand for homegrown workers will intensify. As Lou Colletti, president of the Building Trades Employers' Association, put it: "Contractor capacity and worker capacity are the most important priorities we need to address." High school grads looking for opportunities should take note.

Several forces are propelling the heavy equipment. Chief among them are a rising economy and a growing population; smart, development-friendly policies at City Hall, and an upturn in capital spending by state and city governments. As a result, the construction tab hit a record $19 billion last year and is projected to climb by several billion more over the next three years, said Dick Anderson, president of the New York Building Congress.

Private investment is substantial, too. Consider, for example, housing. The city last year issued 31,600 residential building permits for everything from single-family homes to big apartment houses. That was more than double the number in 2000, with the biggest gains in Brooklyn and the Bronx, up 310% and 300%, respectively.

Mayor Bloomberg has used cost-effective public allocations and zoning reforms to spur private concerns into mega-spending. The benefits include plans for new stadiums for the Yankees and Mets, and a push to build offices on Manhattan's far West Side and as many as 10,000 units of housing on a rundown stretch of East River waterfront in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Also in Brooklyn, Bruce Ratner is forging ahead with his Atlantic Yards project, a $3.5 billion complex with an arena for the Nets, offices and more than 6,000 apartments. In Queens, under the guidance of Gov. Pataki's Empire State Development Corp., construction is underway at Queens West, a $2.5 billion project consisting of 19 apartment buildings and 23 acres of parkland on the East River across from the UN. In the Bronx, the Bronx Terminal Market is being rebuilt in a $300 million investment that will create thousands of permanent jobs.

In Manhattan, the Javits Convention Center is being expanded, the Farley Post Office will become a new Penn Station, the No. 7 subway line is being extended to 11th Ave. and 34th St. and at some point, the World Trade Center site will be rebuilt.

"The city government is taking an active role to shape the future as we transform from a 20th century economy to the 21st century," says Dan Doctoroff, deputy mayor for economic development.

This is the era of the bulldozer, the crane, the hammer - and construction jobs. By one estimate, every $1 spent on building yields $1.50 in economic activity in the city and an additional 66 cents elsewhere in the region. And each $1 million produces 18 jobs in the city and eight in the region.

Ah, the sweet music of jackhammers.

(c) New York Daily News, L.P.: reproduced with permission.