As part of their costly public relations campaigns to gain approval for casinos, gambling operators and their supporters commonly promote the narrative that there is little alternative to their proposal to “add” jobs to a region. “If not this casino,” they ask, “what else is there to put local people to work?” While there are no short cuts to building real prosperity in a community, there are much better options than the path of failure offered by casinos. Here is one: Economists James Heintz and Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, found that infrastructure investment spending in general creates about 18,000 total jobs for every $1 billion in new investment spending. This number include jobs directly created by hiring for the specific project, jobs indirectly created by supplier firms, and jobs induced when workers go out and spend their paychecks and boost their local economy. Below is their 2009 report.
