Richard Stafford, a professor of public policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, is looking to the longer tail of job growth that could come from this bill.

Construction jobs will create “spinoff” jobs, he said, because those workers need to eat, for example. Manufacturing jobs that don’t have a defined start and end date could create three times as many spinoff roles, he said.

“This is really about much more than construction,” Mr. Stafford said.

The “new economy” that politicians, economists and tech leaders so often speak of is also dependent on infrastructure, Mr. Stafford said.

Without broadband, people living in Greene County can’t participate in remote work. Without workforce development, the people needed to maintain and fix self-driving vehicles won’t be prepared for work on these new kind of engines…

“The information highway is almost as important as the physical highway.”
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