Rural Broadband: No Job Creation Machine
Economists say the ability of broadband to spur economic development in rural areas is difficult to quantify. "Everyone talks about the jobs that are going to be created by this," said Scott Wallsten, a senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute. "There is no way to measure that." One problem, he said, is there's no way to tell which of these jobs would have been created even without the stimulus bill. Raul Katz, a Columbia Business School professor, admitted the difficulty in counting jobs, but he nonetheless presented a paper that tried to quantify the effect of the broadband stimulus program on employment. "We know construction will generate jobs," Mr. Katz said. By his count, the stimulus bill will create 128, 000 jobs designing, building and administering the broadband networks. That figure also includes a multiplier effect that assumes that every 10 people directly hired by these projects will spend enough money to create 8 more jobs in other sectors. Beyond the construction, things get more than a little fuzzy. There is some research that shows that spending on networks will create new applications — be it "telemedicine" or e-commerce — that will spur more employment. Over the next four years, Mr. Katz allocates 378,000 jobs to these sources. But he also has his doubts.
Rural Broadband: No Job Creation Machine