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lied in Michigan. The statistics that were obtained showed that the growth rate was moderately high, with 277,800 jobs in the period without the prevailing wage vs. 241,948 jobs in the earlier period. “Thus, some of the greater rise in construction employment in the period without prevailing wages is attributable to slightly more robust general employment growth reflecting cyclical conditions and the passage of time. Accordingly, the estimate of job growth during the suspension of the prevailing wage law was reduced by about 13 percent to account for the moderate general rise in employment growth in that period, yielding a total estimated construction job growth in the era of no prevailing wages of 11,337 jobs” (Vedder 1997).

 

Another finding that was concluded after the analysis of the 30-day suspension period was that the labor costs rise because of prevailing wages. The impact of these rising labor costs depends on three factors:

 

The amount by which the prevailing wages are more than the wages that would otherwise been paid,

 

The proportion that the labor costs occupy in the total cost of construction, and

 

The impact of prevailing wages on the productivity of the workers.

 

It was found that the prevailing wages were almost fifty percent more than what the workers would be getting otherwise. This clearly raises the cost of labor. Also, it is also clear that about 20-30 percent of the total construction costs goes to the laborers (U. S. Bureau of the Census 1992, 712). Also, it was noted that there was an added expense for construction of schools, which the prevailing wages imposed. This caused a lot of frustrations amongst the many officials of Michigan’s school district because prevailing wages made it more difficult for them to gain the consent of important bond proposals from doubtful taxpayers. Statewide in 1998, only 44 out of 107 proposed school bond proposals worth $2.2 billion were approved by voters (Arens 1998). James Kos, superintendent of Hamilton Public Schools in Allegan County, argues that a repeal of the prevailing wage law could save his district “between one and $1.5 million in construction costs and we’d be able to use that money for students” (Kuipers 1999, A1).

 

Many economists still argue that there is a chance that the prevailing wages will improve the morale of the workers and work to supply a labor force that is more skilled. They also tend to present the argument that prevailing wages raises productivity, according to the concept of ‘efficiency wages in the neo-Keynesian economics (Akeroff & Yellin 1986). In order to test this proposition, state government data on construction workers were gathered from the U. S. Department of Labor and data on the value of construction contracts were gathered from the U. S. Department of Commerce. The average productivity of workers in the “no prevailing wage” and “s本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。