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Title: Economic Impacts of a Wage and Benefit Labor Standard for the Bay Area Residential Decarbonization Industry
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2024
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Abstract: Decarbonizing our building stock is a critical step in reducing emissions and slowing the effects of climate change. Residential decarbonization involves replacing all gas appliances, including stoves, dryers, water heaters, and HVAC systems with electric systems and increasing the energy efficiency of homes by upgrading windows, doors, air sealing, and insulation. The federal government and the state of California have made historic large-scale investments to encourage homeowners to retrofit their homes. Creating labor standards to mandate wage floors and benefits levels in the industry can ensure that residential decarbonization investments improve job quality rather than reinforcing labor practices that undermine workers’ well-being. Climate advocates want building decarbonization investments to go as far and fast as possible toward reaching climate goals. Some have expressed concerns that attaching labor standards could raise the costs of residential decarbonization work significantly, reducing the number of projects that can be completed with available funds and slowing down the timeframe for reducing emissions. This paper explores the potential economic impacts of adopting labor standards for the residential decarbonization industry in the 9-county Bay Area. Our study compares the status quo in the industry to two different labor standards that could be adopted: (1) prevailing wages and benefits and (2) setting a wage floor of 180 to 250 percent of the state minimum wage, depending on a worker’s trade, and requiring that employers provide health insurance and retirement plans. For each of these potential labor standards, we estimate the potential impact on worker earnings, operating costs for employers, project prices for consumers and public agencies, the size of the local economy, and local government revenues and expenditures.
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Authors: Thomason, Sarah; Jan, Sharon; Bryant, Chelsey; Haines, Kelly; Huang, Kuochih; Phillips, Peter
Publisher: Movement Economics
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Natural Resource Management
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