Absentee voting in Texas starts on Monday, October 18th, and the general election date around the country is November 2, less than three weeks away. This is a critically important date for the construction industry especially in light of the current state of the economy and the industry.
The economy is still bumping along the bottom with an unexpected loss of 95,000 jobs in September. The good news is that there were 64,000 new jobs created in the private sector last month or the job loss would have been worse. Construction lost 21,000 jobs and unemployment in our industry still stands at around 17% and that is not good for us. Many contractors and specialty subcontractors are watching their backlogs shrink to a dangerously low point and the outlook for 2011 doesn’t look much better according to ENR (subscription required).
In the current political fog of pre-election politics, both ends of the political spectrum are screaming that this is really a referendum of the success or lack thereof of the current administration.
That may be so, but I contend that the underlying driver of the election has to be jobs – how to get those who are unemployed back to work so that our families are supported.
So what? you may ask. Why should you even vote for any of them or for the propositions like California’s Prop 19 that would legalize the growing of Cannabis? Vote because we are still in a tough spot and the next Congress will have to keep the economy in “recovery mode” until we actually see those net new jobs show up in the monthly stats. That Congress will likely take up some type of wage theft, misclassification and immigration bills that will directly impact the way that we hire and build our companies. They will have to deal with the war in Afghanistan where we have sent our sons and daughters to fight for our freedom. They will have to deal with the Great Reset of the economy and they will have to contend with the presidential rhetoric precedent to the 2012 presidential election.
The gravity of the issues that they will be dealing with makes it twice as important that we get out there and vote for the candidates that you think will do the best job for you in Washington in 2011 and 2012.
So, our advice is to GO VOTE for the members of Congress, the Senators and the Governors who you think can best represent you in the 112th Congress that starts on January 3, 2011 and runs through December of 2012.
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