Heritage: Infrastructure Spending Wont Produce New Jobs President Barack Obama and prominent members of Congress have called for a significant boost in infrastructure spending on roads and bridges to create jobs and stimulate the economy. But a new report from The Heritage Foundation asserts that those calls misunderstand the nature of infrastructure construction work. Infrastructure projects are capital intensive, not labor intensive, James Sherk writes for the foundation. Repair and replacement of traffic arteries require a relatively small number of highly skilled workers using advanced equipment, he points out. Slightly more than 300,000 Americans nationwide work in highway, street, or bridge construction, and they comprise just two-tenths of a percent of all workers. So even doubling their numbers would have only a minor effect on overall employment. The highly trained employees who work on infrastructure can require years of on-the-job training before they are fully trained. A structural ironworker, for example, needs three to four years and from 6,000 to 8,000 hours of training. Therefore, few of the currently unemployed workers have the requisite skill and training to work on infrastructure projects. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are only 13,500 unemployed cement masons, concrete finishers, and terrazzo workers in the entire nation. Additional infrastructure spending would consequently employ relatively few unemployed workers, according to Sherk, senior policy analyst in labor economics in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation. Instead, federal construction contractors would hire the skilled workforce they need away from private construction projects, he said. New jobs created would come primarily at the expense of other jobs in the private sector. He concluded that the new spending called for by Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., and others would do more to shuffle jobs around than reduce unemployment. Footnote: Americas infrastructure quality has actually improved significantly over the past two decades, and the number of structurally deficient bridges has fallen steadily since 1992.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Dec 2013 16:43:10 +0000
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