The need to invest in our nation's crumbling infrastructure goes back decades. But today, with millions of people unemployed, there is unprecedented momentum to act. Women, immigrants, and people of color are disproportionately represented in these numbers as are young adults. President Joe Biden and Congress are counting on infrastructure…

In this article, the author describes a role-playing activity on tar sands and the proposed TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline. In this activity, students take on the characters of six key stakeholders invited to an imaginary public hearing to discuss whether or not the State Department and President Obama should approve the Keystone XL pipeline.…

A misplaced obsession with the size of federal budget deficits remains the single biggest obstacle to enacting new measures to create jobs on a scale commensurate with the crisis in the American labor market. Even assuming that budget scoring rules can't be changed, at the very least policy makers should be aware of the true impact a given piece…

The Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of l976, S-50, the Humphrey-Hawkins bill, is an attempt to focus the nation's attention and energy on the problem of attaining full employment. As a matter of law the nation would be committed to achieving an adult unemployment rate of 3% within four years. If those charged with the development and…

This document contains (1) the text of the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1976 (H.R. 50), a bill to establish a national policy and nationwide machinery for guaranteeing to all adult Americans able and willing to work the availability of equal opportunities for useful and rewarding employment, (2) the statements made in committee…

The National Urban Coalition conducted this evaluation to determine the manner in which the provisions of the Emergency Employment Act of 1971 have been carried out, the problems raised by legislative and administrative guidelines, and the difficulties experienced in implementing projects locally. Some major findings were: (1) The Labor Department…

Analyzes the Federal government's record, since the 1930s, on issues affecting employment and the economic well-being of Blacks. Throughout the last 50 years, legislative efforts to create full employment have been directly hampered by poor implementation, weak leadership, and a tendency, highly visible in the Reagan era, to place expenditures for…

The current displaced worker initiative towers over the 30-year effort to bring the economically disadvantaged into the mainstream of the labor market. The Congressional Budget Office defines displacement as all workers 18 years of age and older who lose full-time employment due to slack work, job abolition, or plant closure. Major displaced…

The Guaranteed Job Opportunity Act would make major changes in federal policy on the unemployed by guaranteeing a public sector job to hard core unemployed persons until they find a job in the private sector. Part two of the testimony for this bill was given to a joint session of the Senate Subcommittee on Employment and Productivity and the…

This is a compilation of selected articles and a bibliography on the 1978-79 intercollegiate debate proposition: Resolved, that the Federal Government should implement a program which guarantees employment opportunities for all U.S. citizens in the labor force. The introduction briefly reviews the United States post-World War II history of…

The causes of youth unemployment--especially among poor and minority youths--are enmeshed in a web of social, educational, and economic forces acting on the lives of families. Some of these forces are out of the sphere of federal influence, but labor market industries and the education system also have important effects on the experience of youth…

The Guaranteed Job Opportunity Act would make major changes in federal policy on the unemployed. The bill would allow hard core unemployed persons to work on government projects until they find a job in the private sector. The participants would work four days per week for minimum wages or 10% more than welfare or 10% more than unemployment…

This report reviews the establishment and early performance of the comprehensive manpower system established by the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA). The report is divided into two major sections. Part 1 examines the background and first year results of the CETA program. The legislative and programmatic antecedents to CETA are…

A policy that addresses youth unemployment with monetary expansion for similar fiscal policies is criticized as compounding the problem, and alternative solutions are offered. Accordingly, a brief look at youth labor market characteristics, pertinent labor market theory, and the present industrial distribution of employed youth is offered. A…

This fifteenth special report of the National Commission for Manpower Policy examines the interplay between the forces determining work schedules and the incidence and prevalence of unemployment. In the first chapter the author sets forth the major trends in hours of work and in the changing structure of the labor force that has led increasingly…