Prevailing Wage Laws Cost Taxpayers $8.6 Billion Annually
According to the Heartland Institute:
Biases in the measurement of the federal "prevailing wage" force U.S. taxpayers to spend $8.6 billion a year more for public construction projects than they would have to pay if unbiased measures were used, according to a new study by the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University (BHI).
The measurement biases add 22 percent to the cost of labor on public construction projects and 9.91 percent to overall construction costs, the study finds.
"The existing way of measuring the prevailing wage amounts to the maintenance of a costly and arcane welfare system for construction workers," said David G. Tuerck, executive director of the Beacon Hill Institute and a coauthor of "The Federal Davis-Bacon Act: The Prevailing Mismeasure of Wages."
Adopted by Congress in 1931, the Davis-Bacon Act (DBA) enforces the prevailing wage at the federal level and serves as the basis for prevailing wages in some states. The federal government, 32 states, and the District of Columbia require the payment of a prevailing wage for all workers employed directly on site for government-funded construction projects over a certain dollar threshold...click to continue.
