The Angle

With today’s spectacularly awful unemployment report from the Department of Labor, everyone in Washington is talking about how to create jobs. Some Democrats in Congress are concerned that the economic recovery package won’t do enough to create jobs, and therefore want more money for “shovel-ready” projects to put workers in hard hats onto the roads as soon as possible.

That is understandable, but consider this: What happens if Congress allocates billions of dollars for “shovel-ready” projects in the next six months, and nothing else for down the road? In six months, we’ll have lots of great new roads – and more unemployment (which means nobody to drive on those roads).

What we need is not a quick fix, but a long-term plan that ensures job creation and economic growth over the years that this recession may linger. That means putting not just construction workers to work today, but also the armies of planners, architects, surveyors, engineers and others who will draw the blueprints and create the plans that will provide work for the construction industry into 2010 and beyond.

Not only will that allow us to sustain the recovery, and build better designed buildings and infrastructure, but it will create jobs, too. The AIA is about to release a study showing that its Rebuild and Renew plan would create 14,000 jobs for architects – and a total of 1.6 million jobs nationwide counting other designers, or the construction workers who will build what those architects design.

Job creation. Infrastructure investment. Economic growth. Now that’s a recipe for a long-term cure for our recessionary ills.