October 12, 2017, Arlington, Virginia, USA: America’s heating, ventilation, air conditioning, commercial refrigeration, and water heating industry has bounced back from the Great Recession and has surpassed its 2008 economic indicators, according to a report issued today by the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI), which represents manufacturers of such equipment.

The report found that in 2015, the most recent year figures are available, the industry shipped USD 42 billion worth of products and equipment to consumers in the United States. Although manufacturers alone account for about 125,000 US jobs, together with upstream suppliers, and downstream distributors, that number increases 883,100 US jobs. In addition to these jobs, there are approximately 408,000 jobs associated with installation, construction, and maintenance related to HVACR, which combine to bring the total number of jobs, including contractors, to nearly 1.3 million, the report said. The manufacturer jobs alone generated $15.5 billion of value added to the US economy on USD 10.1 billion of labour compensation, the report added.

A state-by-state analysis found that the top three states in upstream (supplier) employment were Texas, California, and Tennessee. The top three states in downstream (distributor/contractor) economic impact were California, Texas and Florida. 

As with other US manufacturing segments, direct HVACR and water-heating manufacturing employment fell from 191,000 jobs in 2000 to 125,000 in 2009, where it has remained, essentially steady, since, the AHRI report said. The vast majority of the decline, the report added, is due to productivity gains, which have increased at an average rate of 2.2 per cent per year, rather than to a decline in output.