The city's industrial base has changed dramatically since its peak in the mid-1950s and continues to evolve. In 1955, the city’s 1.8 million industrial jobs accounted for almost half of the city’s total employment, with about 1 million jobs concentrated in the manufacturing sectors alone. Today’s industrial economy is much smaller, but also much more diverse.
Industrial businesses are an essential part of NYC’s economy, providing jobs, creating the critical infrastructure and support systems that underpin the city’s daily function, and are especially important to the city’s transition to a greener future.
Today, more than 590,000 private and public sector industrial jobs are located in NYC, representing businesses across construction, transportation and logistics, wholesaling, information and media, manufacturing of all kinds, waste management, repair, energy and utilities. In recent years NYC has seen growing interest in new forms of industrial use, ranging from high-tech prototyping, film, green energy, and artisanal manufacturing. At the same time, the city’s growth overall has supported growth in construction, logistics, and other service sectors.
Image Source: NYC Department of City Planning, 2023
NYC’s industrial ecosystem is diverse and located all across the city – in every neighborhood and every borough. Many industrial jobs are located in neighborhoods one wouldn’t typically associate with being industrial – in fact less than half of industrial jobs in New York City are headquartered in Manufacturing M zones with zoning specifically conducive to industrial businesses, and only 25% are located within Industrial Business Zones “IBZs”, areas where city policy incentivizes industrial uses.
Manhattan has the largest number of industrial jobs followed by Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island.
Zoning rules set the context for where and how businesses can locate in NYC by setting which kinds of uses can locate in different areas, the physical form that those uses can take, and other operational rules like environmental standards, parking and loading, and ground floor requirements that shape a businesses’ relationship to its neighborhood.
M zones allow for a wide range of business types but do not allow for residential uses because historically industry and residence did not mix well. The exception to that rule is the MX zone which was created to encourage a mix of industrial, residential and commercial uses.
M zones account for 15% of the city's land area and contain 24% of the city's total private sector jobs. Commercial zones ”C zones”, which allow more limited industrial activities, by comparison account for 5% of land area and many of the remaining nonindustrial private sector jobs. Surprisingly only 48% of industrial jobs are in M zones.
New York City has 28,500 acres of Manufacturing “M” zones which allow for a wide range of industrial and more limited commercial activity. These zones account for 15% of the city’s land area and are equivalent to the area of the entire city of Boston. The amount of M zoned land has decreased only slightly in recent years (1.5% between 2012 and 2022). Despite the abundance of these lands, M zones are under-zoned generally and are not well positioned to manage competing real estate pressures and the needs of the city. That misalignment means that competition for industrial space is intense and only likely to increase as the city grows.
New York City's M zones are particularly vulnerable to climate change. These areas face significant challenges such as flood risks, air pollution, land contamination, and urban heat island effect. These issues introduce unpredictability, increased costs, and substantial health impacts for industrial businesses, workers, and area residents. M zones are in some cases located adjacent to Environmental Justice communities which are areas of the city that have experienced disproportionate negative impacts from environmental pollution.
The Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental Justice (MOCEJ) has been studying these vulnerabilities and will be providing recommendations to address these challenges in M zones. Learn more about their work to address environmental justice here.
E-commerce is a rapidly growing sector of the economy and is driving industrial job growth. The number of logistics sector jobs grew by 26,000 since 2012. The number of freight transportation jobs grew 29% and warehousing & storage jobs grew 382%. The growth of e-commerce has complicated implications. NYC Planning is pursuing Last-Mile Facility Text Amendment, a proposed zoning change that would establish a City Planning Commission (CPC) Special Permit for new last-mile facilities.