White House Uses ‘Job-Years,’ Not Jobs, to Tout Infrastructure Law
Both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris lauded the bipartisan infrastructure legislation for creating good-paying jobs for “millions” of Americans. But they meant millions of job-years, not millions of additional jobs.
In fact, estimates of how many additional jobs the law will create range from not many to about 1 million over 10 years. The $1.2 trillion act includes about $550 billion in new federal spending over five years.
It is possible that millions of people could be affected, if there are a lot of part-time, part-year and short-term positions. The job-year concept, though, is not the standard way of measuring the impact on employment and not clear from Biden’s or Harris’ remarks.
On Nov. 6, after the House passed the , Biden in a statement: “It creates better jobs for millions of Americans.” Harris also at the bill-signing event: “After this bill is signed into law, millions more Americans will go to work in good-paying good union jobs.”
