New monthly figures collected by the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) reveal a record number of Ohio construction workers – nearly 9,500 across the state – had jobs on stimulus-funded transportation projects in July.
“To create Ohio jobs and rebuild our economy from the ground up, we made the largest commitment in our history to improving Ohio's infrastructure this year. So the record number of Ohioans working to rebuild the state’s transportation infrastructure in July was no accident,” Governor Ted Strickland said. “It was the product of the president’s stimulus and our commitment to putting those resources to work for Ohioans.”
The updated reports from Ohio’s contractors show that 9,476 workers were paid with stimulus funds last month, the largest single-month report for the state since Recovery Act projects began in mid-2009.
During the month of July, those construction workers clocked in 414,047 hours on the job and earned more than $13.4 million in paychecks. That equates to a wage of more than $32 per hour.
For comparison, the same report in July 2009 showed only 1,478 construction workers on stimulus-funded jobs, earning just a little more than $1.9 million.
These new job figures also put Ohio’s contractors ahead of ODOT’s projections of more than $40 million in paychecks to be earned by these laborers and workers between June and September, as the summer construction season intensifies on stimulus-funded projects. Based on these new figures for July, the total summer payroll could exceed $55 million.
To date, Ohio workers on stimulus-funded transportation projects have earned more than $66 million in total since the start of the Recovery Act. Most of that work has been on highway and bridge construction projects, as well as new investments in railroad grade crossings and water ports along Lake Erie and the Ohio River.
As of mid-August, ODOT and its local partners had awarded more than 385 contracts on stimulus-funded transportation construction projects.
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