What Is Your Economic Benefit?

What is the economic benefit of having an aggregates operation in the community? Good question, and the answer is something all aggregates producers should know.

The Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy just released a study that shows the positive impact of a stone, sand or gravel operation on jobs, tax revenues and other businesses in a community. You need a copy. Immediately.

The study – The Economic Impact of the Natural Aggregates Industry: A National, State, and County Analysis – reveals that the aggregates industry is a significant contributor to the economic wellbeing of the United States, generating $27 billion in annual sales and employing 100,000 mostly skilled workers.

The impacts are felt throughout the broader economy. The industry supports $122 billion in national sales, $32 billion in national earnings (i.e., wages), and between 364,000 and 600,000 jobs across a wide range of occupations and industries.

Input-output analysis reveals that each job in the aggregates industry supports an additional 4.87 jobs throughout the economy. These jobs are widely spread across industries and occupations.

Each dollar of earnings (i.e., wages) creates another $4.19 of earnings in other sectors, and each dollar of sales in the industry produces another $3.47 of sales in other industries. The effect of the aggregates industry is both large and diverse. Sizable effects on employment and output are found also at the state and county levels.

These facts matter. As the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association notes: Quarries create jobs and opportunity in every community. The economic effects of our industry are stable and long lasting.

The Phoenix Center was established in 1998 with a mission to provide independent assessments of the economic and material implications of regulatory and economic policy in the U.S. and abroad. To achieve this goal, the center supports objective, solutions-based academic research unencumbered by political hyperbole, partisanship and ideological agendas. Its work is grounded in fact, law and economic theory.

This is an important resource for aggregates producers, and everyone should own a copy. It is available for free download at www.phoenix-center.org.

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