A new report dives into the multiplier effects and job creation induced by maintaining a domestic transit bus industry.
There’s a lot of economic impact in bus manufacturing.
According to new research prepared by Oxford Economics, the manufacture of heavy-duty transit buses – the kinds operated by public transit agencies around the country – supported more than 34,000 jobs, had a more than $5.1 billion GDP impact and contributed more than $1.1 billion in taxes in 2025. The industry’s economic presence can be felt in all 50 states, but is most felt in states with manufacturing facilities and adjacent supplier networks.
“Beyond every transit bus is a network of American manufacturers and suppliers producing everything from engines and powertrains to electric systems, metals, seating, and technology,” Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.) said during a panel discussion hosted by the Bus Coalition on Sept. 16 on Capitol Hill. “These companies support skilled workers and support manufacturing capabilities that go well beyond the transit industry. That’s why federal investment in buses is more than a transportation investment. It is also an investment in American manufacturing, American workers and American supply chains.”
The U.S. fleet of transit buses – which account for roughly half U.S. public transit trips every day – counts at 63,5000, according to the study. And more than half of those buses have already reached the Federal Transit Administration’s useful-life benchmark, or will reach it in the next five years.
That means there’s a lot of buses to be made in the near future. It also means we should maintain strong Buy America policies in our federal infrastructure spending, which often helps transit agencies make these kinds of purchases, so all this economic activity can be captured in the United States.
John Sapp, the president and CEO of bus manufacturer NFI Group, highlighted Buy America’s role in growing the U.S. industrial base at the Capitol Hill panel.
“If you look at when we receive an order, the amount of impact it has, not just in terms of the employees that we have in the United States and our huge U.S. supply base, it’s around the skills that are developed as a result,” said Sapp. “The supply base that we support also supports defense. It supports automotive. It supports aerospace. So, those are industries that obviously have significant impact in terms of the overall industrial base.”
“We are a consistent contributor to allowing that broader industrial base to grow and develop skills in things like welding, like electrical, like manufacturing—all of those skills that are so important for us as a country and intentions of Buy America as a whole,” said Sapp.
The Alliance for American Manufacturing has long supported policies that would induce more production of transit buses in the United States. We’ve applauded when the U.S. Department of Transportation has allocated funding for American-built buses, and we’ve fought hard to make sure foreign state-owned enterprises weren’t allowed to compete for federally supported public transit contracts. We even got sued by a foreign manufacturing conglomerate because of it.
The reasoning isn’t just because having a healthy industry transit bus manufacturing puts a lot of people to work putting buses together. It’s because it becomes an important node in an industrial ecosystem. Remember, the report says it supports 34,000 jobs. A significant number of these jobs are in bus manufacturing, yes, but there’s only a fraction of the total. Far more indirect jobs can be linked to the industry (like those found at parts suppliers) and almost as many are induced by wage-funded household spending. As such, the report finds transit bus manufacturing has a wild multiplier effect: Every job at a bus manufacturer supported 6.3 jobs elsewhere., and “every dollar of value-added economic activity generated directly by transit bus manufacturers supported an additional $5.30 in GDP elsewhere in the economy.”
The Oxford Economics report spotlights the economic impact of America’s transit bus supply chain across the United States, but you can experience it for yourself through your local transit system.
“I would just encourage you all to take a peek behind the curtain,” said Cummins Inc. General Manager Nicole Wheeldon in closing her remarks for the Bus Coalition panel. “We’ve all talked about taking the bus at some stage in our lives, but I don’t know if anybody’s done that today, but maybe take the bus home today, or go visit [a bus manufacturer] and see what it takes to actually run a transit property, or go to visit one of these sites and see how hard it is to turn a 40-foot bus around to go the next leg of the assembly line. This is a really hard, important market. I think that if you got to see pieces of that you would recognize just how critical it is to the economy and jobs.”