Jobs for Everyone
This article advocates jobs for everyone. I am heartily in favor of this idea. It looks like other folks are struggling to figure out some of the aspects, so I'll help.
In 2016, the most recent year for which we have data, a mere 27.7 percent of people with disabilities age 16 to 64 were employed, compared to 72.8 percent of nondisabled people.
To fix this:
* Identify careers well-suited to different disabilities. People with impaired mobility but fine cognition can do most sit-down jobs such as data entry or phone work. They can also do jobs that are primarily mental, such as home decorating -- there are programs to render rooms and buy materials online. Technical or creative writing also work. People with mental difficulties often do better in physical jobs such as gardening, dog walking, or artwork. Some conditions like autism work very well with computer programming and other technological work rather than with people.
* Many disabilities are variable, which currently tends to disqualify people from support systems and employment. This is straightforward to address with a temporary (at different jobs) or permanent (at the same job) system where people could work on the good days and not have to on the bad days. It's most useful in fields that are chronically backlogged and always have things an extra person could be doing.
* First check for people who already have relevant skills or experience. Don't forget hobbies; someone who likes to sew could become a tailor or seamstress. Put them to work first.
* Then deal with the people who don't have job skills or experience yet. Figure out what they'd like to do and would probably be good at, and train them for it.
Second, it’s not clear what exactly participants in a job guarantee scheme would do. Most proposals are somewhat vague on this point, mentioning everything from child care to infrastructure.
Look around, dumbass. The country is full of things that need doing, and people that need work, because the people with the money never want to give up any of it. All you have to do is put the pieces together. There is a massive backlog of undone work; just ask any shortchanged government agency or nonprofit. They will give you a phonebook's worth of jobs. For example, child care, elder care, fixing roads and bridges, and upkeep on parks are critically underserved. Put staff in all the places that are chronically shorthanded such as social work, public defense, and teaching.
The Booker bill leaves most of this up to localities to figure out. Cities, counties, and other areas would get a chance to apply for the program, and the Department of Labor would be required to pick a mix of urban and rural areas to try the idea out in.
Local control to meet local needs is a good idea. However, don't leave people to scrape up ideas on their own. Start them off with a list of common needs for inspiration. Then direct them to check with government agencies, nonprofits, etc. in their area. Once a list of options has been generated, prioritize in order local need.
Once the program was up and running, the vast majority of jobs offered would be in the public sector, and participants who need more skills development would be offered up to eight weeks of training.
As above, begin by placing the people who already have job skills. Next, look at people who had work but their credentials have lapsed or don't apply where they now live. Ask if they want that career back. If so, work on refreshing their credentials. If not, offer retraining. For people without job skills, offer training.
In some areas, employer demand exceeds worker supply, creating shortages of personnel. To address this, suggest those careers first to people who are retraining to change careers or starting from scratch. If there's no match, move on to other possible careers. Offer higher pay and/or other perks to encourage people to choose these careers. Monitor the supply/demand balance to keep the priority list current.
A job guarantee would ideally provide for jobs that are nice to have but could be nixed when the economy improves and the program shrinks in size. Those are pretty hard to identify.
No, a job guarantee should be permanent or it's not actually a guarantee. It's not like that work will stop needing to be done or people will stop needing jobs, unless we completely redesign society and people don't want to do that. Think in the long term: it's not a stimulus, it's universal employment.
If a job guarantee were enacted in a recession, and many of the enrollees became child care providers, what happens when the economy improves and workers find jobs in the private sector? It wouldn’t be tenable to eliminate a universal child care program because the economy improved. Nor, if the program employed bus drivers, would it make much sense to cut bus routes.
That hasn't stopped people from cutting both of those things. America had mass childcare during WWII because women were needed in factories. As soon as the men came home, those programs and people were dumped. It was stupid, but the people most affected weren't in a position to stop it. Much the same is true when cities cut bus routes. Lots of people need to use the bus but either can't afford to or it doesn't do what they need. These are all totally fixable problems, because there are examples of them working just fine. But they fall apart when the people who have money don't want to spend any of it on those things, and the people relying on those things mostly don't have money.
“Public sector employment subsidies tend to have negligible or even negative impacts at all horizons,” the study concludes. “This pattern suggests that private employers place little value on the experiences gained in a public sector program.” One reason, they suggested, was that the programs did nothing to help build skills that would make participants more employable.
For fucksake, start by making sure the bottom rungs are on the ladder. If they are not, put them there. Can the person read, write, and use a computer? Drive or use a bus? Tell time, make and keep a schedule? Handle money, make and keep a budget? Interact with dominant, equal, and subordinate coworkers? Does the person know how to dress for their intended career and have such clothes? Do they know how to write a resume and do a job interview? Those are essential to most jobs. Self-employed type jobs such as crafts or creative writing will need a slightly different set of self-starting skills.
Next, identify specific job skills, including ones needed for narrow and wide applications. Teach those too. Phone skills, using office equipment like copiers, basic janitorial tasks, using construction/repair tools, computer operating systems and common programs, first aid, basic caregiving techniques, and conflict resolution are all examples of highly portable skills. Ask what employers want employees to know. Ask what workers would like to learn. Then teach that. This is not rocket science. But while we're at it, definitely beef up NASA, because money spent there turns into not only high-quality jobs but awesome scientific developments that spill out into everyday life -- everything from powdered drink mixes to crash-protection foam.
Not much discussed in the article, but certainly a concern: How will this program be funded? Take a look at the history of tax rates. Taxes on corporations and rich individuals are much lower now than they used to be. Raise those tax rates, and we'll have all kinds of money to Get Shit Done.
There is no excuse for wasting opportunity by leaving tasks undone and people unemployed. It's a failure of society to connect resources properly. Go fix that.
In 2016, the most recent year for which we have data, a mere 27.7 percent of people with disabilities age 16 to 64 were employed, compared to 72.8 percent of nondisabled people.
To fix this:
* Identify careers well-suited to different disabilities. People with impaired mobility but fine cognition can do most sit-down jobs such as data entry or phone work. They can also do jobs that are primarily mental, such as home decorating -- there are programs to render rooms and buy materials online. Technical or creative writing also work. People with mental difficulties often do better in physical jobs such as gardening, dog walking, or artwork. Some conditions like autism work very well with computer programming and other technological work rather than with people.
* Many disabilities are variable, which currently tends to disqualify people from support systems and employment. This is straightforward to address with a temporary (at different jobs) or permanent (at the same job) system where people could work on the good days and not have to on the bad days. It's most useful in fields that are chronically backlogged and always have things an extra person could be doing.
* First check for people who already have relevant skills or experience. Don't forget hobbies; someone who likes to sew could become a tailor or seamstress. Put them to work first.
* Then deal with the people who don't have job skills or experience yet. Figure out what they'd like to do and would probably be good at, and train them for it.
Second, it’s not clear what exactly participants in a job guarantee scheme would do. Most proposals are somewhat vague on this point, mentioning everything from child care to infrastructure.
Look around, dumbass. The country is full of things that need doing, and people that need work, because the people with the money never want to give up any of it. All you have to do is put the pieces together. There is a massive backlog of undone work; just ask any shortchanged government agency or nonprofit. They will give you a phonebook's worth of jobs. For example, child care, elder care, fixing roads and bridges, and upkeep on parks are critically underserved. Put staff in all the places that are chronically shorthanded such as social work, public defense, and teaching.
The Booker bill leaves most of this up to localities to figure out. Cities, counties, and other areas would get a chance to apply for the program, and the Department of Labor would be required to pick a mix of urban and rural areas to try the idea out in.
Local control to meet local needs is a good idea. However, don't leave people to scrape up ideas on their own. Start them off with a list of common needs for inspiration. Then direct them to check with government agencies, nonprofits, etc. in their area. Once a list of options has been generated, prioritize in order local need.
Once the program was up and running, the vast majority of jobs offered would be in the public sector, and participants who need more skills development would be offered up to eight weeks of training.
As above, begin by placing the people who already have job skills. Next, look at people who had work but their credentials have lapsed or don't apply where they now live. Ask if they want that career back. If so, work on refreshing their credentials. If not, offer retraining. For people without job skills, offer training.
In some areas, employer demand exceeds worker supply, creating shortages of personnel. To address this, suggest those careers first to people who are retraining to change careers or starting from scratch. If there's no match, move on to other possible careers. Offer higher pay and/or other perks to encourage people to choose these careers. Monitor the supply/demand balance to keep the priority list current.
A job guarantee would ideally provide for jobs that are nice to have but could be nixed when the economy improves and the program shrinks in size. Those are pretty hard to identify.
No, a job guarantee should be permanent or it's not actually a guarantee. It's not like that work will stop needing to be done or people will stop needing jobs, unless we completely redesign society and people don't want to do that. Think in the long term: it's not a stimulus, it's universal employment.
If a job guarantee were enacted in a recession, and many of the enrollees became child care providers, what happens when the economy improves and workers find jobs in the private sector? It wouldn’t be tenable to eliminate a universal child care program because the economy improved. Nor, if the program employed bus drivers, would it make much sense to cut bus routes.
That hasn't stopped people from cutting both of those things. America had mass childcare during WWII because women were needed in factories. As soon as the men came home, those programs and people were dumped. It was stupid, but the people most affected weren't in a position to stop it. Much the same is true when cities cut bus routes. Lots of people need to use the bus but either can't afford to or it doesn't do what they need. These are all totally fixable problems, because there are examples of them working just fine. But they fall apart when the people who have money don't want to spend any of it on those things, and the people relying on those things mostly don't have money.
“Public sector employment subsidies tend to have negligible or even negative impacts at all horizons,” the study concludes. “This pattern suggests that private employers place little value on the experiences gained in a public sector program.” One reason, they suggested, was that the programs did nothing to help build skills that would make participants more employable.
For fucksake, start by making sure the bottom rungs are on the ladder. If they are not, put them there. Can the person read, write, and use a computer? Drive or use a bus? Tell time, make and keep a schedule? Handle money, make and keep a budget? Interact with dominant, equal, and subordinate coworkers? Does the person know how to dress for their intended career and have such clothes? Do they know how to write a resume and do a job interview? Those are essential to most jobs. Self-employed type jobs such as crafts or creative writing will need a slightly different set of self-starting skills.
Next, identify specific job skills, including ones needed for narrow and wide applications. Teach those too. Phone skills, using office equipment like copiers, basic janitorial tasks, using construction/repair tools, computer operating systems and common programs, first aid, basic caregiving techniques, and conflict resolution are all examples of highly portable skills. Ask what employers want employees to know. Ask what workers would like to learn. Then teach that. This is not rocket science. But while we're at it, definitely beef up NASA, because money spent there turns into not only high-quality jobs but awesome scientific developments that spill out into everyday life -- everything from powdered drink mixes to crash-protection foam.
Not much discussed in the article, but certainly a concern: How will this program be funded? Take a look at the history of tax rates. Taxes on corporations and rich individuals are much lower now than they used to be. Raise those tax rates, and we'll have all kinds of money to Get Shit Done.
There is no excuse for wasting opportunity by leaving tasks undone and people unemployed. It's a failure of society to connect resources properly. Go fix that.