We don’t need Biden’s 21st century ‘New Deal’ to rebound.
The U.S. economy added 916,000 jobs in March, the Labor Department said Friday, far exceeding the Dow Jones estimate forecasting that payrolls would increase by 675,000. Unemployment fell to 6 percent. It’s the fastest growth the country has seen since August 2020 and a sign that the U.S. is bouncing back after a year of COVID-19 restrictions that hamstrung the economy. Hospitality and construction added the most positions, coming in at 280,000 and 110,000 respectively. Notably, the uptick materialized without manipulation, casting doubt on the idea that we need President Joe Biden’s American Jobs Plan to chart a return to productivity. The proposal would pour $2 trillion into U.S. infrastructure. True to the plan’s name, it’s not really about that. It’s about creating jobs—specifically union jobs, the likes of which directly contribute to the dizzyingly-high price of American infrastructure. “Prevailing wage laws that require federal infrastructure projects to pay union rates to workers are a known contributor to America’s outrageously high infrastructure costs,” writes Reason ‘s Christian Britschgi. “So are Buy America provisions that generally mandate federally-funded infrastructure projects procure (often more expensive) domestic parts and materials.” The result: “Biden’s $2 trillion spending plan will buy a lot less infrastructure than it otherwise could.” About $621 billion would go toward transportation, including revamping bridges and expanding Amtrak.
