Bravo, EPA: Ozone Regulations Gutted $56.6 Billion In Wages And 242,000 Jobs Between 2008-2013

[Geee]

Townhall:

h goodie–the Environmental Protection Agency released new air quality standards at the tune of $1.4 billion in additional regulatory costs annually nationwide. Now, it only slightly reduced the “nonattainment” standard from 75 parts per billion (ppb) to 70 ppb, but the old rule was still an economic disaster. Nonattainment areas are parts of the country that haven’t met federal air quality standards. Of course, those affected areas must improve their air quality, though it often means reducing economic activity.

 

Based on the 2008 75 ppb standard, American Action Forum nnoted lost wages that soared into the billions and hundreds of thousands of job losses between 2008-2013.

 

Using the 2008 numbers, AAF analyzed 442 counties from 28 states. Two hundred and thirty two were impacted by the 2008 air quality standards, though the policy institute admitted that only 208 counties had complete data in their analysis of the regulation and its impact on wages and the labor market:

 

We find that in nonattainment counties, the ozone regulation was associated with a 0.4 percentage point decline in the annual growth rate of total wage earnings. This translates to a loss of $54 million per year in total wage earnings on average in each county. By 2013, nonattainment counties on average lost $272 million in total wage earnings due to the ozone regulation. This means that the ozone regulation reduced total wage earnings by $56.5 billion across all the observed nonattainment counties.