The city’s latest building boom is giving some carpenters, electricians, and other construction professionals extra cash to pay for new homes, cars, and renovation projects.

Brendan MacShane, who is working on the new Bank of America tower at One Bryant Park, said he is nearly finished remodeling the kitchen in his two-bedroom apartment in Hartsdale, N.Y.

He bought his home in 2005 and recently put in new cabinets, countertops, appliances, and a tile floor in the kitchen. The remodeling cost about $11,000.

“I didn’t have to take out a loan. I saved for it due to the fact that I was steadily employed,” Mr. MacShane, a 50-year-old iron worker, said during a lunch break in Bryant Park. “I feel more confident in my ability to pay a mortgage and pay my maintenance.”

Mr. MacShane said he joined a moving company for about four years during the late 1990s to ride out a building drought. He probably could have found some construction work at the time, he said, but it would have been sporadic. He’s been working at One Bryant Park for the past two years — the longest construction job he’s landed in nearly 20 years in the field. He said he’s reaping the benefits of the city’s construction boom.

“I’ve been steadily employed for the last five years. It’s obvious it’s made an impact on my life,” he said.

The work is not expected to stop anytime soon. The construction industry is about to feel the effects of the onset of dozens of projects, both public and private. The World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan, the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, and the new Yankee Stadium are just a few in the pipeline.

Spending for construction in the city is estimated to reach $25.6 billion in 2007, topping the 2006 record of $24.6 billion, according to a recent New York Building Congress report.

In April, there were 121,800 construction jobs in New York City, 6,100 more than existed a year earlier, according to the New York State Department of Labor. That is up from 109,200 jobs in the city in 2004.

Luis Santos, who has been working on a residential building on Warren Street in Lower Manhattan, is planning to upgrade to a five-bedroom house on an acre of land in Levittown, Pa., where median incomes are well above the state average, from his three-bedroom home in Bensalem, Pa.

In the late 1990s, Mr. Santos, said he would hit patches when he was unemployed and would go from one construction site to the next trying to convince foremen it was worth their while to give him a job. Mr. Santos said he has enough confidence in the state of the construction business that he is not concerned about having to make higher mortgage payments. “I’m secure I could get other building” jobs, he said. “Everyone is working.”

Mr. Santos foregoes jobs closer to home, choosing to leave his house at 3:30 a.m. to travel to his construction site in Lower Manhattan. He drives about 16 miles to catch a 4:10 a.m. train to Pennsylvania Station from Trenton, N.J. He then gets on the subway.

The long commute, he said, is worthwhile because he earns $32 an hour in New York for work he would get paid $20 at most in Philadelphia.” Money is a lot more here,” he said. “I make $600 more a week more here than in Philly.” A 22-year-old carpenter who lives in Garfield, N.J.,and works in thecity, Joel Nunez, bought a 2006 Limited Edition Ford Explorer in March. He spent $29,000 on the SUV, splurging on chrome wheel rims, side view mirrors, door handles, and chrome columns that run down the vehicle’s sides.

“I saw the car and I liked how it looked,” he said.

Mr. Nunez said he earns between $40 and $49 an hour at his Manhattan job. Instead of working in New Jersey, he walks from his two-bedroom apartment to catch a 5:10 a.m. bus to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, where he then takes the subway downtown.

Mr. Nunez said that while times are good now, he has not had any trouble finding construction work in the five years since he’s been in the business.

Not everyone in the construction industry reports earning the kind of extra cash needed to pay for new cars and houses.

For Aswad Brown, construction work has become so financially frustrating that after 10 years he is applying for jobs in other fields. Mr. Brown said that while he’s witnessed the boom around him, he’s not feeling its effects. He says the money is going to the developers and other higher-ups, not to the workers on the sites.

“Construction workers aren’t paid enough,” he said during a recent lunch break, clutching a job application from the City University of New York, where he is applying to become a security officer. There are “a lot of people getting fat off of construction, except for the workers,” he said.

Mr. Brown — who unlike Messrs. MacShane, Santos, and Nunez does not belong to a union—makes between $10 and $15 an hour as an elevator operator on the construction site of a condominium building at West 123rd Street and St. Nicholas Avenue.

Hasani Thompson, a 25-year-old union apprentice from Queens who was out of work for most of last year, is pleased to be working and said he’s optimistic construction projects in the city will keep him busy.

“I guess my career looks pretty promising,” he said. “I feel a lot more financially secure.”