A new report on the local building industry boldly predicts that all five boroughs are just now entering a construction boom that, when completed a decade from now, will stand as the second greatest in New York City’s three-century history.

Only the unprecedented building boom of the 1920s will have seen more large-scale improvements and additions to the city’s infrastructure and skyline, according to a report released yesterday by the New York Building Congress.

“We stand at the beginning of a historic construction boom,” the New York City comptroller, William Thompson, told the annual meeting of the building, real estate, and design trade groups yesterday. “We’re soon going to see new stadiums, subway lines, convention center space, and residential developments that would have been difficult to conceive of even a few years ago.”

If there was ever a bellwether for the direction of the city’s economic prospects, experts say it’s the local building industry. The combined real estate, architecture, and construction sectors generate a quarter of the city’s output ($60.8 billion), and collectively employ more than a quarter-million people.

Even the average heavy construction/civil construction worker employed by one of the firms represented at yesterday’s Congress meeting earns $68,900 annually. In all, New York City building industry payrolls total $14 billion.

The Building Congress’s report, “Bedrock of the Economy”, describes a local industry that has rebounded more quickly than any other in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It also suggests the building industry is taking advantage of support from the cash-rich city coffers.

Mr. Thompson, who oversees five city pension funds with a combined market value of $93 billion, predicted that the coming year will result in another record budget surplus. “New York City’s economy is humming and continues to surpass our expectations,” he said.

For the Building Congress, which has met annually since 1921 (the start of the city’s most impressive decade of building), yesterday’s gathering was triumphant in tone. In a town that calls Wall Street home, the city’s builders let it be known that they – and not financiers or bankers – are the economic lifeblood of the region.

“The building industry helped counter the region’s most recent downturn by creating jobs, tax revenues, and stimulating further development,” the president of the Building Congress, Richard Anderson, said. “The industry remains one of the keys to the city’s economic future.”

Among the new report’s findings: Rebuilding the World Trade Center site will create 8,000 construction jobs a year through 2012. The Hudson Yards project, which includes an expansion of the no. 7 subway line, will create 217,000 construction jobs and attract $17.2 billion in private sector investment by 2035.

The study predicts that the Trans-Hudson Express Tunnel will effectively remove 35,000 vehicles from the region’s roads and reduce congestion at Pennsylvania Station for frazzled New Jersey-based commuters. The new stadiums for the Yankees and Mets will create 16,000 construction jobs and more than 1,500 permanent jobs when completed.

The comptroller, Mr. Thompson, began a none-too-subtle bid yesterday for the mayor’s office in 2009 when he challenged the city’s construction and real estate industry leaders to start building with the needs of New York’s poorest and most disenfranchised residents in mind.

“We need smart growth, and the best growth. By that I mean concentrating not only on the heights of skyscrapers but also on how we provide for the people around us. We need to build with a purpose.”