A linchpin argument made by the repeal Davis-Bacon crowd – that the reduction in costs from ending Davis-Bacon would increase the amount of public works construction – seems to make perfect sense. The less construction costs, the more of it there can be. And, as the thinking goes, because there’s more construction, there should be more construction jobs overall because the cost of each individual employee is lower (e.g. you can now afford to hire 2 employees where before you could only afford to hire 1)… In fact, as this argument goes, the repeal of Davis-Bacon would in fact spur construction – because it costs less. Totally reasonable. Totally rational… And you’d think that there would be data out there to support this conclusion. The problem is, not all the data does.
Back in 2001, a Utah University Professor named Peter Philips published an article that took a detailed look at the “ending Davis-Bacon would spur more construction jobs argument”. As with most scholarly works, it is very long and very granular in its detail – and takes aim at a specific body of work done by an economist named Dr. Richard Vedder… But we think it’s worth looking at the first few pages of it (at the very least) because Professor Philips’ research indicates that Davis-Bacon Act repeal doesn’t translate into more construction industry employment. In fact, based upon Professor Philips’ methodology, it seems that the repeal of Davis Bacon Act requirements in Oklahoma, Ohio, Louisiana, Kansas, New Hampshire, Colorado & Idaho corresponded with a loss in construction jobs – which definitely throws cold water on the principal argument for repeal!
Either way, it seems that the controversy over Davis-Bacon Act wages isn’t going to be easily quieted.