Mayor Mike Gets Results
267 new jobs! Give or take:
“Public officials’ estimates of jobs created from these kinds of programs are often exaggerated,” said Paul Wachtel, an economics professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business.
“They put out a big headline number, but there’s a great deal of uncertainty with such estimates — you should take them with a grain of salt.”
Mayor Bloomberg’s spokesman Marc LaVorgna said the city calculated jobs with widely used federal formulas, including a US Transportation Department equation which projects 27,800 jobs created for every $1 billion in construction contracts.
So far, only 1 percent of the $1 billion in Big Apple stimulus funds slated for capital projects has trickled out — about $10 million. And jobs produced so far are few.
The city’s Economic Development Corp. recently gave Hunter Roberts Construction Group $7 million in contracts — $3.7 million to start — to install utilities and interior walls for future stores at the ferry terminals in lower Manhattan and Staten Island.
A company official told The Post it will put about 30 people in various trades to work.
But the city’s estimate is much bigger — predicting 167 jobs, plus 100 more expected to work in the new stores.
Something to keep in mind when you read exciting campaign literature, e.g, “Under Mike, the City is creating jobs by investing more than $10 billion this fiscal year in critical infrastructure projects, and Mike is using additional federal stimulus money on other transportation projects like the rehabilitations of the St. George Ferry Terminal and Brooklyn Bridge.”
Posted: June 22nd, 2009 | Filed under: Follow The Money