But there seems to be little doubt the unemployment rate in construction, including transportation infrastruc­ture, will exceed the national average through 2012 as it did, by a wide margin, through 2011.

Because the Federal Reserve is keeping the lid on short-term interest rates and also trying to bring down already low long-term rates, various estimates suggest there will be little significant movement of rates in 2012.

The election has the potential to be very influential to highway and bridge industries both before and after the polls close. “2012 is an election year, which does not body well for meaningful action in Washington,” says Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) President Dennis Slater. “Both sides are already in full ‘campaign mode,’ it seems, and this presents a real danger of a stalling economy.” But the November elections may also offer some possible cause for optimism. A late-winter or early spring reauthori­zation, increasingly finding bipartisan support and looking more and more likely, might well help cement the idea in the public mind that transportation infrastructure is one of the essential investment programs for America’s future.

This in turn may well become a position that might replace the refuse-to-spend-anything stances of some hardline politicians. Transportation investment may also be reason­ably popular in the new Congress of 2013 which could be more supportive of transportation infrastructure funding than this one.