Vineyard Wind report: Project has created more than 3,700 jobs

More than 3,700 people have worked full time or part time on the Vineyard Wind project since development began almost a decade ago, amounting to more than $380 million in direct employee salaries, wages and benefits. 

The project also exceeded its local hiring goals, with more than 70% of union labor coming from southeastern Massachusetts. 

That’s all according to a new report Vineyard Wind quietly released late last month to unions and the state’s energy department.

The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, which established the reporting requirement with the wind project, said the annual reporting provides transparency and helps the state assess the industry’s impacts. 

“The Vineyard Wind project has created thousands of good-paying local jobs, training and workforce development to create career pathways for residents of southeastern Massachusetts, and millions of dollars in economic benefits to New Bedford and the state,” said DOER Commissioner Elizabeth Mahony in an email. 

“Vineyard Wind demonstrates that additional offshore wind projects would bring immense benefits to Massachusetts, including lowering energy costs and moving us closer to energy independence,” she continued. 

Vineyard Wind declined The Light’s interview request and request for comment. 

Of those employed, about 40% were members of a union, though last year, most of the jobs (73%) were held by nonunion workers. Most of the jobs were created during the last four years of construction, with 3,300 people working during this period either part time or full time.  

The project was set to finish by March, but was hit with a suspension order by the Trump administration last month halting all construction. The New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal is mostly empty now, save a crew of 35 to 40 workers, one tower and several blade sets. 

David Borges, the report’s author and visiting faculty at UMass Dartmouth, has been tracking the project since 2017 with data provided by the wind company and its subcontractors.

The project fell short, again, of its self-imposed hiring goals for minority and women union workers, which the company attributed in part to “broader, long-standing demographic challenges” in the male-dominated field of construction, he wrote.  

Through September 2025, about 70% of union workers lived in Southeastern Massachusetts, which exceeded Vineyard Wind’s target of 51%. The region is fairly broad in this report, defined as Barnstable, Bristol, Dukes, Nantucket or Plymouth counties; 54% resided in Bristol County.  

The 70% figure includes those who temporarily relocated for the job (estimated to be 113 people, or 7% of the region’s total).

Local hiring in New Bedford peaked in 2024 and 2025, when 22% of the project workforce each year was city residents, according to figures provided by Borges that were not in the report. A small number of people in these counts may have temporarily relocated to the city. 

As for nonlocals, many came from port regions in Louisiana and Texas, Borges said, where the oil industry has long employed people with related skills. Others came from overseas, though people who never had “boots on the ground” (i.e. stayed offshore and on vessels) were not counted.

Foreigners weren’t just white collar office staff, Borges noted. They were also skilled in construction, bringing years of experience working for the mature wind industry overseas. 

“We’re sort of in this space where there’s not enough pipeline of local workforce,” he said. “That was the hope in the long run, but people don’t want to get training for a job that might not exist.” (He’s, of course, talking about the hits the industry has incurred since President Donald Trump assumed office again last year.)

Aaron Waechter, a union millwright from New Hampshire, is a crew lead for tower installation offshore. He’s worked alongside Danish, French, Belgian, British, Romanian, Polish, Dutch and Spanish experts on a specialized installation vessel since 2023. Among Americans, it’s been a mix of union and nonunion workers from New England and beyond, he said. 

“The word ‘steady’ isn’t always in our vocabulary. Offshore wind has provided extremely steady work,” said Andy Benedetto, business representative for New England’s millwrights union. 

Some millwrights, he said, found at least two years of consistent work at the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal. It’s been a change from the seasonal, sporadic work to which they’re accustomed.

Waechter, a husband and father with young children, said the job has provided consistency. He works three weeks offshore, and then is off for three weeks. 

“I know a lot of people who having this type of work available has made an impact on what they’re able to do for their families,” he said. “Before this, I would travel across the country to where there was work.” Sometimes, it meant being away for two months.

“This job gave me a fixed schedule,” he said. “It’s been really good for the kids and for my wife.”

The wind project directly paid or spurred more than $620 million in labor spending, Borges calculated, defined as the sum of all payments made to employees, including wages, salaries, benefits, and payroll taxes. This figure includes people not employed by Vineyard Wind, but by businesses and companies contracting with the project. 

Borges included a headcount figure in his report, in addition to the more nebulous industry standard of full-time equivalents (or FTEs). One FTE represents work fulfilled by a 9-to-5, five days a week, 52 weeks a year position. (Two or three part-time workers can amount to one FTE.) 

“I have each employee who has ever worked on the project in a database,” Borges said. “I can see month to month how many hours they worked. They leave, they come back. Some work for a week.”

John Dunderdale, business manager for Piledrivers Local Union 56, said the latest jobs report tells the success story of union labor rising to the occasion and meeting the needs of the new offshore wind market. 

He estimates about 250 members — piledrivers, carpenters and millwrights — worked on the project at various points, including as many as 50 piledrivers during installation of the turbine foundations. 

But with construction nearly done, he said he has maybe one piledriver left on the job. Dozens of union workers have since moved on to help with other projects, such as Revolution Wind and New York’s Empire Wind. 

Economic impacts

Borges also measured indirect impacts, broadly defined as supply chain spending. It would include a company hired for Vineyard Wind, as an example, contracting with a local ship repair business in New Bedford.

“That creates increased demand for services. That supplier in turn has to hire new people or buy new supplies to fill in,” Borges said. Other examples include subcontractors patronizing a city print shop, fuel station, or food supplier. 

Induced impacts, another category Borges measured, are estimated using a model that factors in federal data, like census counts and labor statistics. He feeds the model with data provided by Vineyard Wind, businesses and employers, and the model adds a multiplier that estimates how much of a ripple effect a dollar spent has in a community. 

In all, he estimated that Vineyard Wind to date has created $1.9 billion in economic output in Massachusetts, from the project’s direct spending down to an employee’s household spending in a community.  

It is just an estimate, and Borges said one challenge is that this industry is new to the U.S., so there’s no historical data specific to offshore wind to work with.

Consistent with the project wrapping up, fewer people and hours were being worked by the fall of 2025 — the fourth year of construction. Most of the work went to nonunion members, with about half of them coming from out of state.  

Once the project enters the long-term operations and maintenance phase, which is set to last at least 20 years, Vineyard Wind expects to create 80 to 100 permanent jobs. However, for at least the first few years, some of the jobs may be held by employees of the turbine manufacturer, GE Vernova. 

Borges’ contract with Vineyard Wind is set to end in March, but he hopes to issue a final report summarizing everything he’s tracked for almost a decade. 

Email Anastasia E. Lennon at alennon@newbedfordlight.org.

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