Monday, July 23, 2012

The Walker Budget Keeps Working! Part CXXXIII - Or How The Construction Trade Did Itself In

Scott Walker continues to show us the brilliance of his budget and policies and exactly how they are not going to create 250,000 jobs. Hell, the state will be lucky not to lose 250,000 jobs by the time Walker gets  indicted.

The latest bit of news is that we are #2! And that is not the scatological #2, although the state's construction business is going done the toilet:
Wisconsin lost 10,200 construction jobs in the recent 12 months, second only to Alaska in the percentage of job losses in the sector, a new report shows.

The report from Associated General Contractors of America says Wisconsin lost 11.1% of its construction employment from June 2011 to June 2012.

Only Alaska was worse, with a 20.5% job loss in the construction industry.
Given that this is Fitzwalkerstan, job losses aren't that unusual.

What did get my goat though was the disingenuousness of Ken Simonson, the chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America. I nearly did a spit take when I read what Simonson had to say about the poor showing in Wisconsin:
Twenty-five states added jobs in the industry in the past year, according to the report. Washington, D.C., added the highest percentage of new construction jobs, at 17.8% or 2,100 jobs, followed by North Dakota at 16.2% or 3,800 jobs.

But the employment is likely to remain flat or shrink if federal and state officials continue to pull back on large infrastructure projects, Simonson said.

"The public sector has been cutting construction in all areas," he said. "State governments have seen some pickup in revenue, but they're devoting it to Medicaid, public employee pensions and retiree health care. They haven't increased construction budgets, from what I have seen."

Wisconsin contractors say they've seen some uptick in projects in recent months, although many of their clients are still cautious about spending. The caution has had an effect on hiring.

With revenues down, companies have kept their overhead as lean as possible, said Tom Schuchardt, president of KBS Construction Co. in Milwaukee.

"We are having some difficulties getting subcontractor bids, and we think it's because everybody thinned out their staff when the economy went into the downturn. They are very reluctant to add people back," Schuchardt said.

Single-family home construction has moved up from its absolute low point but is still nothing to get excited about, Simonson said.

"And I don't have a clear answer as to why the employment numbers were so dismal in Wisconsin," he said. "I was a little bit shocked because I have always been told the Midwestern states don't get the extreme highs and lows, and this time Wisconsin came in as one of the worst" states for construction job losses.
Now keep in mind that the construction trade was a big supporters of Walker during his campaigns. So it's not surprising, although still disappointing, that Simonson keeps up with the talking points about Medicaid, pensions and health care costs, all of which Walker has cut.  Those areas are no the places that the money they were hoping for went.

The fact of the matter is something that people like Simonson and almost any teahadist can't or won't admit is that Walker has stabbed them in the back and threw them under the bus in favor of larger, more benevolent donors and supporters.

While Walker did throw them a bone in the form of an uptick in road building projects (something anyone who has driven through Wisconsin in the last few months can testify to that fact), he also cut them deep when he slashed shared revenue and funding for schools. With those deep, to-the-bone cuts, that means no new schools and no major projects by city or county governments, such as a new firehouse or new civic center, or as we in Milwaukee know all too well, not even minimal maintenance on existing buildings.

Furthermore, when most people are scrambling to make ends meet and just keep from going bankrupt, they are not about to take on any significant building projects such as a new home or building for their small business.

A friend of mine who is much more savvy in politics than I am and has fought Walker with me for the past ten years kept remarking that he just didn't understand why these supposedly savvy barons of business couldn't see that they were cutting their own throats by supporting Walker. Even now as their trade's life is being drained away, and the money they normally would have earned being siphoned to out of state companies that gave Walker more money, they apparently still don't get it.

And until the front line workers who are out of work or are just barely hanging on, start to put pressure on these trade guild leaders to stop making foolish decisions like supporting Walker, things are not going to get better for them or anyone else soon.

4 comments:

  1. Walker has to make the Wisconsin economy as bad as possible to align with the Boehner-McConnell policy and deliver Wisconsin to Romney (or whoever ends up as the GOP nominee).

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  2. I thought these captains of industry were the job creators. Their taxes have been cut, their BFF is Governor and still they aren't creating any jobs. Now the lazy bastards want socialist style government handouts. What the hell is wrong with them?

    But of course, there is always time to bitch about money being spent on health care and those awful public employee pensions, paid for by the employees themselves.

    But at least they stopped that damned high speed rail project, that boondoggle was one hell of a job killer right there.

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  3. "But the employment is likely to remain flat or shrink if federal and state officials continue to pull back on large infrastructure projects." The federal ship sailed when high speed rail was rejected.
    Capper, you're a great researcher, how much did the value of the Wisconsin and Southern Railroad increase when the high speed rail was killed? As we know, it was sold shortly after that.

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  4. Huh? I thought the private sector creates, not government, so what the heck does Medicaid spending even have to do with the construction industry?!

    "The public sector has been cutting construction in all areas," he said. "State governments have seen some pickup in revenue, but they're devoting it to Medicaid, public employee pensions and retiree health care. They haven't increased construction budgets, from what I have seen."

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