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Second Stimulus would be a job stimulus bill

The first stimulus package was supposed to bring down unemployment and create 4 million jobs in a period of two years. As we can see, the jobs created were nowhere near the mark and the unemployment rate stands at 10%. Economists now realize that bringing the unemployment rate down is going to be a hard task and certain experts, feel that even if the government managed to create 200,000 jobs every month it would take almost seven years to bring down the unemployment rate by half.

In view of all these concerns a job stimulus bill of $154 billion was passed in the US House. When this legislation becomes a law, this amount will be used for providing funds for training workers which are needed in emerging and high-growth industries. The money will also be used in increasing the police force and firefighters in municipalities. A senior analyst has predicted that this stimulus is critical, as it will definitely bring down the rate of unemployment which would not happen if this money was not spent.

The major portion of the amount to be allocated for this job stimulus bill will be put to use in construction of highways and mass transit systems, and half a billion is earmarked for construction of airports and around $800 million to develop Amtrak. Considering this bill is much less than the first stimulus package of $780 billion, it still amounts to one percent of the gross domestic product of United States.

Although the job stimulus package has passed the House, the government is still not sure on how many jobs this bill will generate. There is still quite a bit of divided opinions on the best sectors which will generate the most jobs. According to US PIRG and Smart Growth America, the amount of jobs generated by spending on public transportation was almost double to what would be generated if the amount was spent on building highways. According to an expert, an investment of one billion dollars in building railways and buses generates about 16,419 jobs every month compared to 8,781 jobs that would be generated if the same amount was invested in building highways.

Many other experts also support more investment in railways, as they argue that the thousands of people who were rendered jobless because of the slump in the auto industry could find work in building rail as the skill set required to build a rail car is the same that is required to build automobiles. The construction industry on the other hand says that highway construction is important, as there is 19.4% unemployment in their industry, and certain states have already named about 9500 projects related with transit and road and bridge construction.

The job stimulus bill will also boost the job training programs which had an outlay of around $4 billion in the first stimulus program, and the spending was slowly going down in this sector. About $1.25 billion is being proposed out of the total towards new training programs.

Tags: government, jobs, law, money, Stimulus

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