The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is providing stimulus money to weatherize homes, which will not only help create Atlanta construction jobs, but will help needy residents as well.

The Clarkston-based Partnership for Community Action is expecting to receive $8 million in grants during the next three years, according to an article by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The money should help the organization increase the number of homes it weatherizes in DeKalb and three other counties from 240 a year to almost 700 a year.

The stimulus legislation increased the income threshold for free weatherization services to twice the poverty level, up from 125 percent. That means a family of four must make less than $44,100 to qualify for aid up to $6,000.

Other organizations and businesses are taking advantage of the new focus on weatherization. The Fulton Atlanta Community Action Authority is hoping to receive some federal money, which would help the group become a player in the weatherization field and hire more workers. Bird Insulation has hired four new workers so far, and hopes to hire three more in the near future.

Atlanta’s construction industry, and economy as a whole, could use the extra job creation. During March, the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta area’s construction industry employed 109,200 workers, according to the United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is down from 111,600 workers during February and a 17.4 percent decrease from last year.

Overall, the area had a total non-farm employment of 2,329,700 workers during March, down from 2,330,600 workers during February and a 4.7 percent decrease from last year. Atlanta saw its unemployment rate increase from 8.6 percent to 9.3 percent during February.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 11:10 am and is filed under jobs, Construction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.