The Swamp Stomp
Volume 14, Issue 3
Each year we like to take a look back at the wetland jobs market with the hope to find some encouraging news. Most of our focus has been on the wetland assessment side of the business. This is always a tricky analysis as the data is usually extrapolated from various sources and the cobbled together. There is not labor class called “wetland scientist.” Although, after reading a couple of new reports, there should be. It is a growing business.
About a week ago Forbes magazine published and article entitled, “Now THIS Is What We Call Green Jobs: The Restoration Industry ‘Restores’ the Environment and the Economy.” The focus of the article was about a new economic report published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on the topic of the ecologic restoration industry. The study was limited to the restoration side of the wetlands business and included other types of restoration. Everything from wetlands to streams to endangered species were included in the study.
One of the biggest challenges of the study was defining what exactly is meant by restoration. This served as the first aspect of the study and helps identify industries associated with restoration. The authors did not want to include non-green types of projects affectionately known as gray projects. The challenge was not to mix hazardous waste restoration with wetland or stream restoration. Oftentimes these types of restoration are co-mingled.
The second aspect of the study was to identify the jobs that arose from the green restoration work. Again the authors were faced with the challenge that many of the green jobs were housed within existing engineering and consulting firms. The trick was to segment out the individuals that work in the green aspects of the firms work.
A number of highly credible economic sources were used in the development of the study. Number companies like Price Waterhouse Coopers have been tasked with developing economic analysis studies for various clients that focus on green restoration. The Nature Conservancy has undertaken a number of these studies on some of their projects that are quite informative.
Getting back to jobs there is an economic principle called employment multiplier. Quite simply this is the number of jobs that are created for a given amount of money spent in a particular industry. This is usually expressed as a number of jobs per million dollars spent. This is part of a bigger analysis called economic multipliers. This translates to a increase based upon spending. This is also called a total demand multiplier. For example for every million spent the result is 2.5 million increase in output. Therefore, you have a total demand multiplier of 2.5.
The report provides and analysis of variation in job impact estimates by project type and geographic scale. The news is good. This table represents a number of case studies and the jobs associated with them.
| Type of Restoration | Jobs per$1 M Invested | Geographic Scale(State) |
| Forest, Land and Watershed | 39.7 | National |
| Invasive Species Removal | 33.3 | State |
| Grassland | 13 | County |
| Upland | 15 | State (OR) |
| Wetland | 6.8 | County |
| Wetland | 12.9 | State (MA) |
| Wetland | 17.6 | State (OR) |
| Wetland | 29 | State (LA) |
| Tidal Marsh | 7.1 | County |
| Fish Passage | 10.4 | State (MA) |
| Fish Passage | 15.2 | State (OR) |
| Fish Passage/Dam Removal | 18.2 | State |
| Dam Removal | 10.3 | State (MA) |
| Dam Removal | 20.5 | State (CA) |
| River | 9.7 | County |
| In-‐stream | 14.7 | State (OR) |
| In-‐stream | 31.5 | State (MT) |
| Hydrologic reconnection | 14.6 | State |
| Riparian | 19 | State |
| Riparian | 23.1 | State (OR) |
| Oyster Reef | 16.6 | State |
| Oyster Reef | 20.5 | County |
As you can see the number of jobs associated with the restoration industry is relatively high. By comparison the oil and gas industry has an employment multiplier of 3.
The following is the conclusion from the UNC report.
Based on a thorough review of the literature, it is clear that the U.S. has a highly active restoration industry, contributing growth and jobs to the national economy in the short-‐term as well as long-‐term value and cost-‐savings. Despite the commonly held idea that environmental regulations like the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act impede development, there is ample evidence that the public and private investments driven by these regulations have a stimulating effect on economic output and employment. Restoration investments appear to have particularly localized benefits, which can be attributed to the tendency for projects to employ local labor and materials (Weinerman, Buckley and Reich 2012, Davis et al. 2011, Shropshire and Wagner 2009). Though contractors and workers may experience seasonal and inter-‐annual fluctuations in income and employment, like their counterparts in the construction industry, preliminary evidence indicates that restoration jobs are well compensated in comparison to average wages (Shropshire and Wagner 2009).
Federal appropriations for restoration-‐related programs can be conservatively estimated at $2.5 billion per year (see Appendix: Restoration Program Database). Public and private investments linked to compensatory mitigation total an estimated $3.8 billion per year (Environmental Law Institute 2007), and non-‐profit investments in natural resources and wildlife preservation and protection are estimated to exceed $4.3 billion annually (Southwick Associates 2013). As demonstrated by the economic contributions literature, these large-‐scale restoration investments stimulate output and employment in a wide range of other industries, through supplier and household spending effects. However, due to variability in multiplier effects at different geographic scales, across different geographic areas, and among different types of projects, there are real challenges to scaling up contributions estimates to the national level. Further research is needed in order to understand the total size of the Restoration Economy, and the impact that restoration investments have on the national economy.
Between the private, public and non-profit groups a total of 8.1 billion is spent on restoration annually. That translates to 8,000 jobs. Not too shabby.
Have a great week!
– Marc