Gearing Up: Smart Standards Create Good Jobs Building Cleaner Cars

By Chris Busch, John Laitner, Rob McCulloch, and Ivana Stosic
The BlueGreen Alliance and American Council for Energy-Efficient Economy
June 2012

In 2011, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed joint fuel economy and greenhouse gas pollution standards for new cars and light trucks.

These proposed standards would reach the equivalent of 54.5 miles per gallon (mpg) and 163 grams of carbon dioxide per mile (g/mi) for the average new vehicle in 2025. Hereafter we refer to these proposed joint fuel economy and greenhouse gas pollu¬≠tion standards simply as “the proposed standards.” In this report, we analyze the macroeconomic impacts of the proposed standards with particular attention to the net gain in U.S. employment.

Our analysis finds that the proposed stan­dards will create an estimated 570,000 jobs (full-time equivalent) throughout the U.S economy, including 50,000 in light-duty vehicle manufacturing (parts and vehicle assembly) by the year 2030. Real wages are projected to increase even faster than job growth. This implies that the proposed standards will both lead to new jobs and, on average, higher-paying jobs across the U.S. economy. By 2030, we also find a net increase of about $75 billion in annual Gross Domestic Product (all monetary values in 2010 dollars).

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