The North Carolina Department of Transportation says building high-speed rail will create more than 4,000 jobs in the short run, but the estimate is based on a counting method the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not recognize.
The Obama administration directed the DOT to use its jobs-years methodology to estimate the number of jobs created by the project (PDF). The method can inflate the estimated level of employment a project will support.
Under the job-years concept, if one person holds the same job for four years, it’s counted as four jobs. That’s how DOT can claim that federal funding would create nearly 4,800 jobs when in fact only about 1,200 people would be employed.
To watch CarolinaJournal.tv’s full report on the high-speed rail funding debate, click on the video.
Anthony Greco is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.