Good Jobs First Blog

A recent report from the White House outlines how 32 programs in the emergency package spurred an equitable recovery from the pandemic. Notable successes highlighted in the 301-page report include a sharp decline in unemployment among people of color, the largest number of new jobs ever in a calendar year and lowering black and brown child poverty rates.

While the country mourns yet another mass shooting, one sad, obscure truth in this debate is the fact that the companies producing weapons are being subsidized by communities across the country. While a full accounting of how much the public gifts to gun makers is hampered by poor transparency practices, but we know for sure that the companies have received millions of dollars, often just to relocate.

Good Jobs First has just completed an upgrade to our “Megadeals” dataset, by adjusting all subsidy values for inflation. (Megadeals we define as $50 million or more for a single project.) Considering that the first reported Megadeal took place in 1976, they now span 46 years. So adjusting for inflation matters for accurate comparison of deals many years apart.

Good Jobs First (www.goodjobsfirst.org), a small Washington DC-based non-profit with a big footprint, now seeks a Project Coordinator responsible for a project that uses a database, reports and technical assistance to document how much revenue government bodies are foregoing to corporate tax breaks.

The American Rescue Plan included a program meant to keep small businesses owned by disadvantaged groups in the restaurant industry open during the height of the pandemic. The $28.8 billion grant program—known as the Restaurant Revitalization Fund—gave money to over 100,000 businesses, with some grants going as high as $10 million.