Where the Heck are the Green Jobs?
I often get the same question about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: where are the green jobs and projects? A recent Wall Street Journal article sheds light on that question:
"The Obama administration's economic-stimulus program has delivered about a third of its total $787 billion budget during its first year, much of that to maintain social services and government jobs and to provide tax cuts for workers. Now, the pace and direction of stimulus spending are about to change.
Infrastructure spending is set to step up in the second year of the stimulus program, which should mean more money flowing to private-sector employers."
Infrastructure spending includes the green building projects that will be administered by the General Services Administration, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. A large portion of the $180 billion set aside for infrastructure projects has not been spent:
"During year one of the stimulus, only about $20 billion of money was handed out for infrastructure projects.
'I think we'll see a lot more stimulus money get into actual contracts and actual hiring in 2010 than we did in 2009,' said Kenneth Simonson, chief economist of the Associated General Contractors of America."
If you are looking for ARRA green building projects, 2010 appears to be the year.
Photo: vividbreeze
Related Links:
Bulk of Stimulus Spending Still to Come (WSJ)
Last time I had looked, the spending in DC was around 10% of the funded total (that was a while ago though). No surprise it will take a while for those funds to get flowing.
The real question to me is how bad things would look without the stimulus dollars, and the answer is probably even worse than now. I wonder about construction though, we still have 25% unemployment already. Hoping things bounce back here this year ...
I'm seeing lots of work through the solar photovoltaic tax credits. Without the credits, these projects wouldn't be occurring. I think those programs are stimulating green jobs.