The Deval Patrick job math: Massachusetts has four governors
When Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick outlandishly claimed that his $1billion life-sciences initiative would create 250,000 new jobs I speculated that maybe the Governor meant it would create 25,000 jobs which over the span of ten years - the duration of the initiative would result in 250,000 worker-years (assuming an extreme front-loading of the creation of jobs).
It now seems clear that he Governor was making similar calculation when he claimed that his proposal to allow the establishment of three state-licensed casinos in Massachusetts would create 30,000 construction jobs, a number critiques found hard to believe. A newly released study by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce sheds light on where the Governor got his 30,000 figure from. Yes, Patrick was likely talking about worker-years, not payroll jobs. States the study:
Estimates of construction labor requirements were derived from the cost of large, recent casino development projects. Construction labor inputs may be measured in terms of the total amount of labor necessary to complete a project or in terms of the average number of people employed during the project lifecycle. The former is expressed in worker-years while the latter is in terms of jobs. The projected total labor requirement for the initial construction is between 30,100 and 34,400 worker-years of labor… Dividing labor requirements measured in worker-years by a three year construction period results in an estimate of 10,000 to 11,500 construction jobs during development.
So there you have it. The Governor cooked the numbers by talking about jobs when he meant worker years.
It may not matter what Patrick is babbling about. The Taunton Gazette reports that state Rep. David Flynn is saying that the Governor’s three-casino proposal is going nowhere in the Legislature.
(Link to Chamber of Commerce report via Dan Kennedy. Link to Taunton Gazette via Universal Hub.)
