This bright idea is making the rounds among the True Believers on social media these days:
Will all these political proposals really create jobs? If so, why not just keep adding new programs until we achieve full employment? Heck, according to USDOT, we get 47,000 new jobs per $1 billion spent building roads. Let’s guess that it costs about $5 million to build the average mile of road (not so far off overall), so that works out to 235 jobs per mile.
The US labor force stats show 7.9 million unemployed.
Bernie’s right. All we need is to build about 34,000 miles of road and there won’t be a single, solitary unemployed person anywhere in the country!
My work here is done.
Bernie is, of course, talking out of his hat. The Stimulus package, touted as the great Creator of Shovel Ready Jobs, created about 127 highway jobs overall.
See, the problem is that building roads and bridges *used* to take a lot of people. Now it takes a lot of heavy equipment.
In an earlier “jobs” program, “the GAO found that (1) unemployed persons received a relatively small proportion of the jobs provided, and (2) project officials’ efforts to provide employment opportunities to the unemployed ranged from no effort being made to working closely with state employment agencies to locate unemployed persons.”
BTW, $1 trillion divided by 7.9 million unemployed people gives every one of them something over $126,000. Each.
Hey!
Hey Bernie! Over here! I’m mostly unemployed!