STIMULUS WATCH: In jobs, what's stability worth?

[Omaha Steve]

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20090607/D98LQOO80.html

Jun 7, 8:02 AM (ET)

By MATT APUZZO

WASHINGTON (AP) - Washington is paying hundreds of millions of dollars to build new, cleaner-burning buses, but don't scour the want ads looking for a burst of job openings soon at major manufacturers or suppliers.

The bus money, like many other programs in the $787 billion stimulus plan, is having the less glamorous and harder-to-quantify effect of keeping workers employed, providing a slight buffer from the recession to some in the auto industry.


Lance Jackson works on the doors of a new, cleaner-burning bus at the Daimler Buses North America facility in Oriskany, N.Y., Wednesday, June 3, 2009. Washington is paying hundreds of millions of dollars for the new buses, one of the $787 billion stimulus plan programs, that has the less glamorous, harder-to-quantify effect of keeping workers employed - a buffer from the recession to some in the auto industry. (AP Photo/Kevin Rivoli)


At the White House, where saving jobs always was as much a priority as creating jobs, the bus industry is a success story. But it also shows how hard it is to account for that success, especially in an industry that keeps shedding jobs despite the stimulus.

"The stimulus has been a plus, but it's just, how do you do the math?" said Patrick Scully, chief commercial officer at Daimler Buses North America Inc., which operates plants in New York and North Carolina. "You could say, without it things would be worse."

The dollar signs in the stimulus law seem to foreshadow a bull market for companies that build buses, engines, transmissions and axles. Connecticut has budgeted $71 million to buy hybrid buses. New Jersey will spent $35 million plan to rehabilitate its fleet. Rural Oklahoma counties and Cape Cod, Mass., vacation spots have bus projects in the works.

Because local governments are strapped for cash, some companies braced for a slowdown in transit spending. The stimulus is more likely to keep things stable than send sales booming, industry executives said.

FULL story at link.

[Coyote_Bandit]

1. No stimulus for the unemployed?

I already knew that.....