By Michael K. Powell & Harold E. Ford Jr. - Broadband for America (BfA) Honorary Co-Chairs
Last week President Obama delivered his first State of the Union
address. While the state of our nations economy appears to be showing signs of life unemployment is still very high and will probably continue to be a problem our government faces.
There are many avenues for the government to pursue to generate new jobs; and a significant number of those avenues have broadband cables and wireless towers running right along them. It was very encouraging though to see President Obama commit to taking on the joblessness so many are experiencing.
Even as job losses began to accelerate in 2008 the broadband/IT sectors created nearly half of all new jobs in America. And overall the broadband ecosystem employs over one million people directly and 1.9 million indirectly for a total of more than three million jobs right here in the United States.
President Obama and the U.S. Congress will no doubt begin immediately looking for ways to efficiently and effectively invest resources into creating new jobs. Americas broadband providers have invested more than $100 billion private dollars over the past two years creating thousands of jobs in the design production installation and maintenance of their networks.
And that doesnt include the potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs which have been generated by people creating content writing applications and developing new uses for broadband access to the Internet.
It is hard to remember that smartphones werent even introduced until just a few years ago. Since then billions of applications have been downloaded.
Someone wrote every one of those applications and thousands of them were written by small businesses some as small as one person. Not every app will provide a full-time-equivalent income for its developer; but any income for a person or family which may otherwise be struggling is a great benefit and opens many virtual and physical doors.
That is just one example of the effect just one device can have on the jobs picture.
On a macro-economic level as companies continue to express reservations about rehiring full-time staff they are turning more and more to part-time employees or contractors working from their homes using their broadband connection telecommuters.
And more and more laid-off employees are recognizing the potential of being able to use the computer they already own over the broadband connection they already have in their homes to generate income to do for several companies as a contractor what they had been doing for one company as a full-time employee.
When working from home child care and commuting expenses are reduced or eliminated meaning they may actually have more take-home (or stay-home) pay than they had as a full-time employee.
Those who need new skills to find a job should can and do use their broadband access to help learn them. Distance learning at the secondary and post-secondary levels is becoming easier to access more functional to control and more useful to actually qualify for a job.
And finally the job application process itself has become broadband-based for many companies and for many government positions.
The President is clearly very aware of the economic challenges confronting the nation and understands our government must be focused like a laser beam on the issue of creating jobs.
By taking a close look at what the investment in broadband has delivered and how those networks create maintain or enhance employment our nation has a solid opportunity to position America not just to create new jobs but 21st Century ones.
