Ask the state's industry statistics how many people build aircraft on Long Island and the answer is about 2,500. Ask the industry and the answer is about 28,000, working at more than 350 small and mid-size firms. Both numbers are accurate. The difference is how the work is classified, and that difference shapes where New York's workforce and economic development dollars go.
Government statistics sort every business by what it makes, using the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). A company is counted as "aerospace" only if it builds aircraft, engines, or complete assemblies. But most of Long Island's aerospace and defense industry is the supply chain beneath those assemblies, and that work is counted elsewhere:
Each piece looks modest on its own. Put back together, they form the region's largest manufacturing sector.
The New York State Department of Labor's 2025 list of significant manufacturing industries for Long Island:
Read this way, pharmaceuticals lead and aerospace barely registers.
Counting aerospace and defense as one cross-cutting sector, across every tier of its supply chain:
The aerospace and defense figure draws from several of the state's categories at once: much of computer and electronic products, the bulk of the region's machine shops and metal finishers, and the aerospace share of transportation equipment. Chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing has no aerospace overlap, so it stands as is.
| State category | 2025 jobs | Aerospace & defense share |
|---|---|---|
| Chemical manufacturing | 14,300 | None |
| Computer & electronic products | 8,900 | Large: avionics, navigation and guidance, defense electronics |
| Fabricated metal products | Not reported separately | The bulk of the aerospace supply chain: machine shops, plating, finishing |
| Transportation equipment | 2,500 | Aerospace products, plus submarine and shipbuilding suppliers |
The categories overlap with the aerospace and defense total and cannot be added together. The 28,000 figure is Ignite Long Island's count of the local defense industrial base and may include some non-manufacturing employment.
Workforce funding, economic development incentives, and training programs are planned around the official categories. A sector that is invisible in the statistics is easy to under-serve, and this one can least afford it. More than 35% of Long Island's manufacturing workers were 55 or older in 2024, up from 20% in 2004, and industry estimates put open aerospace and defense manufacturing jobs at 950 to 1,000, most of them hard to fill with local talent.
LIFT asks New York State to track aerospace and defense as a defined cross-sector industry cluster, drawing from the electronics, fabricated metal, and transportation equipment categories, and to publish it alongside the standard industry reports. Planners and policy makers should see the region's largest manufacturing sector for what it is.