by Mary Ratcliff
The newly released 2025 edition of Construction Coverage’s Best-Paying Cities for Construction Workers reports that in San Francisco: “construction workers earn a median $79,000 per year. Factoring in its 18.2% higher cost of living, SF metro construction workers earn the equivalent of $66,822 annually — the 11th highest among all large U.S. metros.”
According to the report: “The U.S. construction industry is navigating a period of heightened uncertainty in 2025, marked by shifting trade policies, restrictive immigration enforcement, and persistently high interest rates. New tariffs on imported steel and aluminum have driven up the cost of materials, delaying projects and prompting redesigns, while a tight labor market and evolving immigration rules have strained the industry’s ability to find skilled workers.”
Black skilled workers – and Blacks who aspire to work construction – are not hard to find, but they’ve been locked out of the construction industry since 1998, when a noose was hung on the SFO jobsite of Liberty Builders, the company owned by Dr. Willie Ratcliff, who also publishes the SF Bay View newspaper. Back then, young Black folks commonly worked construction for at least a few years until they could comfortably afford a car, a home and a family. Some went to college to become construction professionals – architects and engineers. Others loved the work enough to make it their life’s work, becoming contractors who could give younger Blacks the opportunities a Black contractor had given them.
According to the report: “The construction industry generally compensates its workers well, especially when considering that few construction occupations require a postsecondary degree. On a national level, full- and part-time wage and salary construction workers earn a median of $58,360 per year — about 18% more than the overall median wage of $49,500. Over the past two years, construction wages have increased by 15.4%, up from $50,570. In contrast, wages across all occupations grew just 6.9%.”
The noose at SFO in 1998 put a stop to that construction work tradition by announcing, in effect, “Construction in San Francisco belongs to whites! No Blacks allowed!” Black contractors with their Black crews worked so hard and fast that they had become a competitive threat. When the long-awaited T-train was built on Third Street, the main thoroughfare in Bayview Hunters Point, San Francisco’s Black heartland, Black contractors had been squeezed out of business, and Black workers couldn’t even get the most menial job. Since 1998, the city’s skyline is packed with skyscrapers built by big white contractors who locked Blacks out. No wonder the Black population has plummeted.
The SF Bay View invites vigorous discussion and action on the issue of the lockout of Blacks from construction. Email mary@sfbayview.com with your news and views.
