It’s heartening to hear the President Obama talk about creating or saving four million jobs’s under his economic recovery package. Looking back at the campaign website, it promised: "Obama and Biden will also create an energy-focused youth jobs program to invest in disconnected and disadvantaged youth" And, in his January 30 announcement on establishing a middle class task force, he noted that, "We’re not forgetting the poor," who want to join the middle class, and that they would be "front and center" in efforts to strengthen and expand the middle class. As it happens, there’s a long history of programs aimed at helping poor young people to move ahead.
Ever since Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, various federal programs have funneled billions of dollars into jobs initiatives that included disadvantaged youth, most of whom are in the inner cities. We had the Comprehensive Employment Training Act in 1974, followed by the Jobs Training Partnership Act in 1983, and now we have the Workforce Investment Act which, no doubt, will be replaced with something else by this Congress. Yet, despite such efforts—spanning more than 35 years—unemployment among inner-city youth, most of whom are minorities, remains stubbornly high. Indeed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the January unemployment rate among all blacks was 12.6 percent compared to 7.6 percent for whites.
I’d like to offer some advice to the new administration, garnered from 20 years with a nonprofit that helped more than 16,000 young people from low-income homes, mostly in Chicago’s inner-city, to find and keep good jobs. I’m happy to pass on these tips to the Obama-Biden team:
1) Rid yourself of any notion that inner-city unemployment is sustained by an intractable "culture of poverty."
As Professor William Julius Wilson pointed out back in 1987 in his groundbreaking work, The Truly Disadvantaged, the key issue is that jobs left the inner city but the residents couldn’t follow them. And with globalization, this can happen anywhere. Two examples are Maytag’s closing of its Newton, Iowa, plant last year, leaving 1,000 workers without jobs, or the migration of much of the American textile industry overseas during the past two decades.
2) Don’t count on government efforts alone -- get everyone’s help.
Our organization (Jobs for Youth/Chicago) recruited hundreds of volunteers from the business community to help with every aspect of our work. For both our young clients and the volunteers, this offered an opportunity to establish relationships between groups that otherwise would never have met. For many of these young people, it was their first opportunity to know middle-class wage earners who could offer useful job-related counsel and often open doors to jobs in their businesses. We found this to be an effective way for all parties to break through the crippling isolation of the ghetto. And, by all means, solicit both public and private dollars to support the work. This creates a kind of virtuous cycle that enhances the commitment to these programs across economic and political lines.
3) Keep your eye on the ball.
Guiding young people, disadvantaged or not, can be frustrating—just ask any parent. This might explain why such a large portion of federal job funds ends up being siphoned off for things like extended training programs, subsidized make-work and other "enrichment activities"—rather than actual, self-sustaining jobs. Bluntly put, programs that can’t deliver real jobs with real wages should not be supported.
4) Anytime is a good time to start a program.
I began my work in 1980, when the inflation rate was a hair-raising 13.6 percent. Three years later, unemployment in metropolitan Chicago had risen to 13.1 percent. Early job placements by our organization were very difficult. However, once employers got to know us and developed confidence in our ability to prepare and screen candidates, they came to prefer hiring through us. It was a more efficient – and cheaper -- way to get good workers, particularly in a down economy.
As we all know we’re experiencing a terrible economy with the highest unemployment rate in 25 years. As said, I hope President Obama’s team will include specific initiatives tailored to find jobs for inner-city youth, and that the strategies they develop move them into sustained employment – not jobs that end when programs end, and leave these people unemployed and without hope, once again. From his work as a community organizer, I think President Obama understands these things, and maybe this time we’ll get it right.