A former economic advisor to President Obama recently told the Washington Post that despite gloomy economic forecasts, wages and employment in Louisiana actually went up after the 2010 oil spill.
Joseph Aldy, who left the administration and is now a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School took a close look at job markets across the Gulf Coast and concluded the unprecedented response effort led by BP and the government to contain and clean up the spill represented “a kind of economic stimulus” for the region.
“In the end, we had billions of dollars going into spill response in the Gulf in a very short period of time. And I find something that looks a lot like traditional fiscal stimulus in other context,” Aldy said. “All that activity helps create jobs. That offset some of the effects of the oil spill.”
The complete Washington Post interview with Aldy is available online here.
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