Funds from the federal stimulus package, which was designed to create and maintain jobs, is slowly starting to trickle down in North Carolina.
A total of 556 employees in the state received $356,764 in payroll for working on transportation stimulus projects in May, according to the N.C. Department of Transportation. Those employees worked a combined 17,690 hours.
While the total is still small, it grew considerably from April, when just 74 employees earned $22,751 for 994 hours of work. No N.C. employees received stimulus payroll money in March.
N.C. DOT has received a total of $838 million in federal stimulus funds, including $735 million for road and bridge projects. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that every $1 million spent on transportation creates 30 jobs.
Source: Charlotte Business Journal
4 Comments
July 14, 2009 at 5:11 pm
We need to bring BACK our outsourced jobs. The IT workers (programmers), customer service folks, textile and furniture workers — to name a few…
It isnt rocket science to know that the massive loss in tax revenue is because our NC corporate employers would much rather hire people in India and China and elsewhere than people in their hometowns. When people lose jobs to other people overseas, the localities as well as the entire state loses as well.
We lose tax revenues and we also lose because those outsourced people spend a heck of a lot less on products and services here in NC. In their towns, their counties and the entire state. We ALL lose. It really doesnt take an Einstein to figure out how outsourcing has destroyed this economy. Nothing else did it. Sure the mortgage problems are there too — but its nothing compared to outsourcing.
Give me my job back at the pay that I was earning and I will be more than able to afford my mortgage (and my health insurance thank you).
I mean, this is insanity. And dont get me started on the illegals who are apparently doing “the jobs Americans dont want to do”. As if. There was a good 10 years of mass media ‘conditioning’ going on with that issue. Conditioning to MAKE people feel that the illegals are here because we dont want to clean high-rise office building or cut lawns. Have you been to the malls or shopping centers lately? There is an abundance of perfectly good workers being dropped off to loiter around: teens! Lets get them to work too.
Remember, the local and state taxes win when we employ people HERE and these people are on the tax rolls too.
Lets stop screwing around and address the problem.
July 15, 2009 at 9:06 am
I can understand the frustration you must feel. However, there is the other side of the coin as well – and that is the opinion of the employer.
As an employer, I can tell you that in order to grow a business – it must figure out how to maximize profit (hopefully at the same time grow the business through the hiring of great talent).
Outsourcing is nothing new. We have outsourced our auto industry (by buying Japanese cars). We’ve outsourced our agriculture by buying our fruits and vegtables from other countries. We’ve outsourced our IT work by finding those who can do the same thing for less….which in turn enables American companies to SELL their product at a comparable price and/or maximize profit opportunity (same objective).
Either way – mankind has always “outsourced”. We will (both as companies and consumers) seek to pay the lowest rates (assuming comparable quality). To assume otherwise is abit naive.
As an individual – it’s important to pay attention to the ebb and flow of business. You need to know if your industry, your occupation and your own job are in peril, or not. If so, you need to act WAY BEFORE that day arrives so you are prepared.
Just one man’s opinion….
July 15, 2009 at 8:54 am
Want to see a symptom of this massive problem as it related to the I.T. world? Here is a post on a programming forum where someone in another nation, who I will assume has received outsourced work from some cheap US corporation, simply asking for the program to do what he needs it to do.
THIS is what our corporations are paying people in India 1/3 the US salaries to do. And I bet there are idiot Americans who will simply give them the answers and, thus, they look great in the eyes of our idiot CEOs who dont care about the local towns and economies — just their own wallets.
http://visualbasic.ittoolbox.com/groups/technical-functional/vb-vba-l/read-a-word-document-line-by-line-using-visual-basic-2874803
July 15, 2009 at 9:16 pm
It has nothing to do with the individual knowing how to sense when the music will stop – so that he/she might be able to quickly fall into a chair, lest be the one without a chair when the music stops.
It has to do with social responsibility and logic. Go ahead, keep on outsourcing. The more people forced to work at Wal-Mart (if they are so lucky to find work), the less there will be to purchase your product.
I dont care how much profit “maximizing” you do, you cant make too much profit giving your products away to people who make 8 dollars per hour.
Mine is not of frustration but that of a warning… you people might have lucked out this time, and for now. TARP and/or stimulus funding might have prevented a complete collapse today and maybe in the next year or two, but once inflation kicks in and the inability to pay back the interest on these Trillions of dollars becomes reality, the US will collapse so fast that you wont know which side is up.
This might be accellerated by those of us who refuse to purchase anything NOT made in the USA. We’re a growing population and we speak with wallets. Or, what is left of them.
Good luck to YOU as I think you’re the one who will truly need it come 2012, 2013 or so.