Labor & Employment Law

Stimulus Funds Creating Jobs

By James Parks

Critics of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the stimulus package, often lump it in with the bailout of the banks. But the Recovery Act has nothing to do with Wall Street. It is putting people back to work on Main Street, by creating or saving millions of jobs.

A recent “ABC Evening News” report showed the legislation was behind 3,100 jobs in Philadelphia. The city’s Housing Authority is using its $127 million grant to rehab public housing, putting 3,000 people to work. A local window manufacturer hired 100 new employees to meet the demand for new windows for the public housing.

As Carl Greene, executive director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, told ABC:

Without the stimulus money, 3,000 less people would have the opportunity to work.

The Philadelphia story is just one example of how the Economic Recovery package has created jobs. A report by the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) lists numerous stimulus success examples. Because Recovery Act projects are covered by the “Buy American” program, which requires contractors to use domestically produced products, Americans are going back to work:

• Some 275 teachers in Chesterfield, Va., will be able to keep their jobs for another year.
• Pike Industries, a New England construction company with operations in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, was awarded $31.5 million from the Recovery Act to complete roadwork construction projects. The projects will create jobs directly and indirectly through subcontractors and increased business activity at local sawmills, hotels, fuel companies, convenience stores and coffee shops.
• The North Carolina Coastal Federation began a project in September for building and monitoring 47 acres of oyster reefs in the Pamlico Sound near Belhaven, N.C. Partnering with local contractors, universities, the NC Sea Grant and the state’s Division Todd Miller, executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, projects that around 140 jobs will be created by the mining and barge loading processes alone. This is in addition to the long-term economic benefits of commercial and recreational fishing enabled by reef reconstruction.
• In St. Louis, an entire police cadet class of 50 officers was saved by an $8.7 million grant that will pay their salaries for three years.

Read the AAM report here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 27, 2010 (boomark / email).