The Future of Employment

How do we measure change? Unemployment continues to rise yet economists have stated that the economic stimulus package has worked. The consensus is that the success of the stimulus was based more on saving jobs rather than creating new ones. However, does that consensus help the laid off teacher’s aides in New York City, or the states across the country that have reported that their jobless rates have increased in October? As easily as we throw around statistics, I think we can also lose sight of the painful cost of the recession; the family forced to seek food from a soup kitchen because both parents are underemployed, the students unable to attend college due to lack of funds. The time has come for policy makers, elected officials, and career experts to create opportunities that will truly ease the pain of so many suffering from lack of employment. The time is now for big ideas.

Genuine job creation is the next step in restoring consumer confidence and rebuilding our economy. While saving the jobs of teachers and other civil servants is admirable, the economic health of our country will not improve unless more Americans are employed. So how do we make this happen? Quite simply, jobs are created by either the private sector investing in workers or by the government developing new opportunities for its citizens to work. Since small businesses and major corporations have still been reluctant to hire en masse, the onus for job creation dutifully falls to our government. While a New Deal type jobs program focused on infrastructure development, renewable energy, and biotechnology may seem beyond the reach of federal, state, and local administrations, it is most certainly one of the best strategies to boost our economy.

Let’s use New York as an example of the innovative programs that can be created to stimulate the economy. For instance, New York Governor David Paterson announced that stimulus funds would be utilized to expand the biotechnology industry in the state. Such plans would allow New York to attract and retain lucrative bioscience companies, contributing to both the state’s tax base and employing hundreds of workers. Mayor Bloomberg also discussed the importance of diversifying the economy of New York City, to no longer rely so heavily on the volatile financial services industry. Part of this strategy will be to increase manufacturing and distribution jobs, while also focusing resources on health-care jobs, which seem to be recession-proof.

It is evident that a paradigm shift must occur, wherein policy makers and elected officials truly make a sustained commitment to renewable energy, the so called green economy, while fully investing in education and training for all members of the population. For example, the hardest hit by the recession are those individuals who are lower income, and who have less than a college degree. A truly innovative plan about how to include these individuals in the economic recovery has been by proposed by the Dubois Bunche Center for Public Policy at Medgar Evers College (City University of New York). The so called Thurgood Marshall Plan would create Recovery Neighborhoods which would enable urban centers to receive the necessary resources to benefit those most in need of assistance. It is a revolutionary plan, which challenges government to direct funds to areas which are not typically the recipients of such largesse. Similar to the Empowerment Zones of the 1990s, these Recovery Neighborhoods would be zones of development, spurring trade union-employer partnerships, reinvigorating the apprenticeship system, an important gateway to stable, well paying union jobs, and allowing students with a Regents diploma to transition into possible unionized green jobs. It is a bold idea and one that warrants more attention.

The future of employment will no longer be solely dictated by tax cuts for businesses to seemingly stimulate job growth. Such strategies have failed to lift those most in need out of unemployment or underemployment. Therefore, the future of employment will include innovative jobs creation proposals, enabling all segments of our society to be gainfully employed and to be able to contribute to the financial health of their country.

Career experts such as myself can contribute to the economic recovery and proposals such as the Thurgood Marshall Plan, by assisting policy makers and government officials in implementing such programs, developing appropriate training opportunities, utilizing career assessment tools to identify best fit job options and providing guidance about job readiness skills (e.g. interviewing, resume writing, career transitions, etc.). We can no longer afford to wait for the private sector to act, the time is now for all concerned to engage our governmental officials in a dialogue about taking bold steps to get more Americans working. It is both a moral and fiscal imperative.