The Grumpy Economist: Infrastructure and Work

The Grumpy Economist: Infrastructure and Work

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

[ad_1]

In the eyes of many leftists, it is always 1933. Building “roads and bridges” will “create jobs” and absorb the despair of a large number of unemployed people who seem to see jobs.

I drove around, but I noticed that we were built with large machines, not many people. Construction jobs are highly skilled jobs, not shovel jobs. “Ready” itself is a misnomer. No one uses shovels on construction sites anymore, they use backhoes. Whether you are reading this article, or me, or an unemployed Wal-Mart greeter or bartender, cannot do anything useful at the road construction site.

Lark, i’m going Bureau of Labor Statistics See how many people are employed in road and bridge construction.

Newest

Change from February to March

Total non-agricultural

144,120.0

916

Building construction

1,689.3

17.8

Heavy and civil engineering construction

1,062.9

27.3

Water supply and drainage system construction

183.8

Oil and gas pipeline construction

134.9

Electric power communication system construction

211.3

Highway streets and bridge construction

338.3

Professional trade contractor

4,714.2

65.0

From a perspective, the total number of non-agricultural employment is 144 million, an increase of nearly 1 million from last month. This is a lot, usually 200,000 is a good month. Well, we are quickly recovering from the pandemic. In case you can’t hear the hammering of nails, there are 1.6 million housing construction workers, of whom 4.7 million are in the industry. (We are not as good as building new places as we build new houses.)

The current total number of unemployed persons is 9.7 million, which is lower than the peak of 23 million.

Roads and bridges employ 338,000 people. The total is only half of this month’s revenue. We can use some water conservancy buildings in California, although this will not happen, and with only 184,000 employees, there seems to be room for expansion. 135,000 oil and gas pipelines are under construction. Oh, oh.

But these are all things in the bucket. In a sense, this is good news. One day, Washington suddenly realized that 30 million jobs are costs, not benefits. This means that we can build some roads and dams without hiring too many people. (The main obstacles to infrastructure are still legal obstacles, soaring costs and improper choices.)

But as far as work is concerned, there are also those beautiful WPA murals and embarrassing photos of Dorothea Lange… Well, this is not 1933, and here, high-skilled, heavy machines, and the construction of roads and bridges are not the solution The way.

My inspiration comes from Marginal revolution cover Garrrett Jones’ tweet report of Thesis by Valerie Ramey Shows that infrastructure spending has no stimulus effect. This is much simpler.



[ad_2]

Source link

More to explorer

Understanding Key Factors in Accidents

[ad_1] Pedestrian Safety Statistics Pedestrian safety is an urgent concern worldwide, with over 1.3 million people dying in traffic accidents annually. Pedestrians