Obama’s Job Plan Will Be More Successful if Driven by the Private Sector

President Barack Obama is well aware that private sector investment creates the majority of sustainable jobs, even though it goes against human nature to invest during hard economic times.  Federal stimulus money has saved/created between 600,000 and 1,500,000 jobs, according to the Congressional Budget Office – a faction of the 7,500,000 million jobs lost.  Lest we fault the Obama administration, remember that we generated one-third as many jobs during this decade as the 1990s.

According to Architecture 2030’s e-news bulletin, “Funding infrastructure projects with more stimulus dollars will not put America back to work. Why not?  Because infrastructure projects depend on tax revenue and the generator of tax revenue is the private sector.  Funding infrastructure projects with stimulus funds simply substitutes federal dollars for tax revenue dollars.  While some infrastructure spending and financial help to state and local governments is warranted, it will not put America back to work.  Each $1 billion of federal infrastructure spending creates only 7,667 one-time construction jobs and 9,000 indirect jobs.”

So what is the answer?  Architecture 2030 notes that, “The real engine behind American jobs is private building sector construction.  This sector is an amazing jobs machine, employing millions of Americans, spurring economic activity in almost every other U.S. sector, and generating large amounts of private investment and spending, as well as the tax revenue needed for infrastructure projects and other public services.  The bad news is the construction industry is reeling” and impacting many other sectors of the U.S. economy.