Category: Government

For years and years, advocates of big defense spending have argued there is a major economic benefit — jobs.  These claims are ever more strident now because of high unemployment and threats to further growth in the defense budget.  Hearing the footsteps on the unaffordable, underperforming F-35, Lockheed, among others, touts the jobs they pretend the program creates.

The defense budget does create jobs, but it is highly inefficient at it.  Large portions of the total defense budget are spent on things that have nothing to do with jobs in the US; even the procurement and R&D accounts (i.e. the portions that porkers in and out of Congress claim to be US-jobs-rich) are terrible investments for employment.

Source for chart: Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier, “The U.S. Employment Effects of Military and Domestic Spending Priorities,” Department of Economics and Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts, October 2009.

The question is not whether military spending creates jobs – it is whether more jobs could be created by the same amount of money invested in other ways.  The evidence on this point is clear.

• A billion dollars spent for military purposes creates 25% fewer jobs than a tax cut;
• one and one-half times fewer jobs than spending on clean energy production;
• and two and one-half times fewer jobs than spending on education.

And though average overall compensation is higher for military jobs than the others, these other forms of expenditure create more decent-paying jobs (those paying $64,000 per year or more) than military spending does.[1]

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: DoD Spending is a Jobs NEGATIVE”