Creating Jobs Now

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I believe that every person should have the opportunity to work at a job that provides a decent wage and dignity.

So far, we have a jobless recovery in the worst recession since the Great Depression.  Over 8 million jobs have been lost nationally since the official start of the Great Recession.  Illinois lost 395,000 jobs between December, 2007, and July 31, 2009.  Some economists have predicted that the economy will continue shedding jobs through the middle of 2010.  Chicago’s official unemployment rate is 11.5 percent, higher than the national average of 9.7 percent.  For African-Americans and Latinos, the official national unemployment rate is 13 percent and 15.1 percent, respectively.  However, on Chicago’s south side, the unemployment rate is estimated to be 20-30 percent.  The youth unemployment rate in Chicago is 25.9 percent; in the African-American community, it is close to 50 percent.   

Our most urgent short-term priority should be preserving and creating jobs through restoring state budget cuts and stimulus spending, as explained in detail in Al Hofeld’s position paper on “Fiscal and Revenue Reform.” 

However, while the federal stimulus and state stimulus funds are creating high-paying jobs, they are not creating jobs for minorities, especially African-Americans.  Most of the infrastructure jobs are “shovel ready,” meaning that the contracts and jobs go to large, unionized companies already under contract.  Only those minority workers who happen to be completing apprentice programs concurrently stand a chance of getting jobs.  WBEZ reported this fall that African-American and Latino contractors received about 2 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively, of total contract dollars awarded by the Illinois Department of Transportation.   

Another plentiful source of stimulus jobs is the green dollars from the federal Department of Energy; these are jobs retrofitting buildings to reduce carbon footprint.  But these are also jobs in the construction trades, which means that minorities face the same barriers to entry.