Today in Dallas, the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness will convene a Listening and Action Session with local businesses. This session will focus on how American infrastructure supports American jobs. The issues to be discussed are all too familiar to many in Texas and throughout the country.
An estimated 30 million Americans will soon be driving on America's highways en route to Labor Day gatherings with family and friends. Many motorists will encounter potholed on-ramps, rusting bridges, and congested roads. And while idling in these traffic jams, the thoughts of many will drift to America's still-fragile labor market: its 9.1 percent unemployment rate, with nearly 25 million unemployed or under-employed Americans.There is a crucial connection between potholes and unemployment. America's crumbling infrastructure is eroding America's competitiveness in the global economy by eroding America's ability to attract and retain global corporations and their high-productivity, high-wage jobs.This was not always so. Over much of the 20th century, America's strong infrastructure investment was a major factor attracting global corporations headquartered in other countries to invest and create jobs here. Rising U.S. standards of living were fueled by a strong infrastructure system that facilitated the growth of companies in America, both global and domestic alike: transportation systems to move people and products, electrical systems to power plants and offices, communications backbones to drive computers and creativity. By 2008, the U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies employed over 5.6 million Americans -- nearly 2 million in manufacturing -- and exported $232.4 billion in goods. That's 18.1% of America's total.Today is very different. America's decaying infrastructure costs the typical American worker hundreds of hours in lost productivity. It also costs companies time and efficiency in moving their products around -- and also out of -- the country. This decay is particularly stark for global companies, whose executives are witness to the dynamism of emerging economies like China and India that present them with ever-widening choices for where to grow jobs and investments around the world.Yet at the same time, these global companies -- along with their U.S.-based counterparts -- are already on the job helping fund, build and operate infrastructure projects in America that are high-quality, efficient and green. They have a strong interest in a modernized infrastructure to maintain their success in this country and enable them to continue as a source of American job creation into the future.How global companies support American infrastructure can be seen right here in Texas. Consider the Texas Department of Transportation $224 million project to reconstruct State Loop 12 and State Highway 114 stretches along Loop 12, a project that is part of a bigger effort to alleviate bottlenecks on the many roads around the site of the former Texas Stadium. A significant number of trucks on the job come from Mack Trucks Inc., a widely recognized part of Sweden's Volvo Group, which employs more than 10,000 people nationwide.Or take the DFW International Airport Skylink. Supplied by Canada-based Bombardier, the fully automated people-mover system has been maintained by Bombardier since it opened in May 2005. More than 60 Bombardier-built vehicles are in service at DFW, shuttling passengers among connecting flights without needing re-screening and at an average ride time of less than five minutes. Bombardier operates and maintains similar systems throughout America, including at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport.America today needs to create more than 10 million new jobs to restore full employment. The 109 million private-sector jobs in the U.S. today is the same number there were in summer of 1999. Whether we address this jobs crisis will depend a lot on whether we address the infrastructure crisis. Not improving America's infrastructure will mean the erosion of America's global competitiveness, and with that the loss of future American jobs and related investments to other countries.Today's Listening and Action Session will hopefully be one step in avoiding this future. Beyond that, Congress must pass comprehensive infrastructure legislation now to support America's competitiveness. In particular, Congress must ensure that sufficient funds are dedicated to this urgent issue. Americans stuck in Labor Day traffic understand this challenge of building infrastructure to build jobs. This connection should be on the minds of policymakers and business leaders in Dallas today as well.Matthew J. Slaughter is professor and associate dean at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He also is economic advisor to the Organization for International Investment, of which Bombardier and Volvo are members.Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
