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Report: Infrastructure Investment Can Create Thousands of New Jobs
A new report makes a strong case that rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure could go a long way toward helping our economy recover—a key priority for President Obama. Investing in the nation’s infrastructure could create some 18,000 new jobs for every $1 billion in new infrastructure spending on the nation’s transportation, energy, water systems and public schools, according to the report.
The report, released last week by the nonpartisan Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) ), found that at least 2.6 million new jobs could be created by increased spending in a “high-end” scenario of $148 billion per year (including $93 billion in public investment). While the construction and service industries will see the vast majority of job creation, manufacturing, which has been devastated by the current economic crisis, also would benefit from such an infrastructure stimulus, seeing an increase of 252,000 jobs nationally. Click here to read the study.
Says United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard:
The nation is confronted today by the worst economic downturn in decades and a deteriorating infrastructure. We need to immediately address both problems. By making major investments to repair and upgrade our infrastructure, we will create much needed, good-paying jobs that will help to get the economy back on track. America too must have its own capacity to produce the infrastructure materials we need.
According to the report, the benefits for manufacturing would be felt throughout the economy, with new jobs created in such industries as fabricated metals (38,000), concrete and cement (21,000), glass-rubber-plastics (15,000), steel (9,000) and wood products (8,200).
In a recent radio address, President Obama said he plans to introduce an economic stimulus plan that would, among other things:
- Put nearly 400,000 people to work by repairing our infrastructure—our crumbling roads, bridges and schools.
- Build the new infrastructure we need to succeed in this century, investing in science and technology and laying down miles of new broadband lines so that businesses across our nation can compete with their counterparts around the world.
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2 Comments
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For maximum effectiveness, shovel ready projects should be initiated in communities all across the country and rated based on a job creation to population. In order to enhance project commitment, openness, accountability and to provide a spirit of ownership, it might be wise to require localities and/or host projects to commit to a certain level of the overall project funding. That would also extend the the overall impact of the stimulus money.
Outsourcing of jobs has been devastating to the American economy, and some kind of legislation that will discourage big business to stop this practice must be put before Congress and President Obama. I hope the AFL-CIO and other unions already has this on their agenda for 2009.