The Waiting Game

US Air Program Shutdown Costs 70,000 Jobs-Contractors

WASHINGTON, July 27 (Reuters) - A partial shutdown of federal aviation programs has put roughly 70,000 workers in construction and related fields out of work, the Associated General Contractors of America said on Wednesday.

A temporary authorization for aviation spending ended Friday night, cutting off $2.5 billion worth of construction projects at airports across the country. The Federal Aviation Administration has also furloughed nearly 4,000 employees.

According to an analysis the association commissioned from George Washington University, 24,000 construction workers and 11,000 service and supply workers are now unemployed because of the partial shutdown.

As many as 35,000 jobs "will be undermined in the broader economy, from the lunch wagon near the job site to the truck dealership across town," the analysis found.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives last week passed an extension of the temporary authorization that cut $12.5 million from rural airports and reduced subsidies for a handful of underserved airports. The bill met a dead end in the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats seeking a straightforward extension with no cuts.

Without an authorization, the federal government cannot collect $200 million a week in taxes that it uses to fund airport capital works projects. Air traffic control and most operations are not affected.

The Obama administration has said nearly 90,000 people stood to lose their jobs during the shuttering.

Those workers, though, will not show up in key government indicators for a while. Even if they filed for unemployment insurance benefits on Monday, those employees would not be counted in the jobless claims report the federal government will release on Thursday.

The contractors' association and labor unions are concerned about the effects of a prolonged shutdown on their sector, which is still suffering from the burst of the housing bubble three years ago. The industry unemployment rate was 15.6 percent in June, according to the association's chief economist, Ken Simonson.

The Laborers' International Union of North America puts job losses due to the shutdown at more than 80,000.

"Congress needs to pass a quick, clean extension that gets these projects going and puts people back to work," the union's General President Terry O'Sullivan said in a statement.

Few in Congress, though, expect an extension to pass before the current fight about the debt ceiling ends, which means that construction workers could be unemployed for weeks.