By Carla I. Javits, REDF President
On my first day back from the new year’s holiday, with the barrage of bad news about unemployment over the holidays running through my head, I tuned in to an Urban Institute audio webcast called: “Help Unwanted: Mitigating the Recession’s Toll on the Workers Most at Risk.”
Harry Holzer – one of the top national researchers on at-risk workers – told us that since November 2007 overall unemployment rates had risen by 3 million people from 4.7% (4% for whites, 8% for African Americans) to 6.7%. Teenage unemployment went up twice as fast, and the picture for high school drop outs and people who had been incarcerated was especially bleak. Of course in California we’re looking at overall unemployment of 10% – so all these figures are even higher for us!
Last week’s tragic shootings in Oakland reminded me of this broadcast. While there is no easy answer to preventing this in the future, one thing that the parolee who shot the police officers definitely did not have immediately upon exit from prison was a job. And all the data is definitive that crime and recidivism decrease dramatically when former prisoners have jobs.
Holzer also noted that not only are unemployment rates higher for people who are most at risk (such as people who have been incarcerated or homeless or young people who dropped out of high school), but they are much more vulnerable in the downturn, and they have less access to the safety net than ever. They even get less unemployment insurance.
Holzer’s prescription: improving and expanding the safety net; making sure that some of these most disadvantaged workers are able to access the jobs created by the new stimulus act by creating targeted community service, transitional and youth employment jobs and more linkages to education.
While Holzer’s ideas make sense, he did not mention social enterprises — a market-oriented, income-earning solution with the added benefit of sustainability after the stimulus funds run out.
The President, California’s Governor, and local San Francisco officials should make sure that social enterprises which employ the most disadvantaged workers have a chance to be part of the supply chain as contractors and subcontractors for the goods and services that will be purchased as the stimulus package rolls out – green jobs, infrastructure and all.
There’s precedent for this. The federal government now makes it possible through the Javits-Wagner-O’Day/AbilityOne program for more than 600 nonprofits around the country to employ 40,000 severely disabled people a year by delivering more than $1.6 billion of goods and services under contract to the federal government – things like military uniforms and landscaping services.
A whole lot of more of this can be done through state and local government, and private sector contracts with social enterprises – like the ones in REDF’s portfolio — that create jobs not only for people with disabilities – but also for other people who have absolutely nothing to fall back on. If we do this right, more people will be working and paying taxes instead of out in the streets, back in prison, or searching for what little safety net is still stitched together.
