When the COVID-19 pandemic plunged the economy back into recession in early 2020, it laid bare a fragile and profoundly inequitable labor market. The economic expansion that reigned from 2009 through 2019 brought historically low unemployment and inflation but failed to reduce income inequality or arrest the decline in the number of high-quality,…

Although numbers might not tell the full story, they reveal important patterns of disadvantage among youths, and suggest the magnitude of youth unemployment. One way of dealing with the youth unemployment problem is to direct public policies and public expenditures toward areas in which the problem is most severe. (Author/EB)

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 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…

Compares federal job creation efforts of the 1970s to the Work Project Administration (WPA) program in the 1930s. Traces the development of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) and stresses the need to unite public and private resources to achieve both balanced economic growth and full employment. (SK)

Authors assert that public service employment (PSE) is one form of macroeconomic policy and compare PSE to tax reduction, federal subsidies, and other forms. They propose a design for an ongoing federal employment program and conclude that a PSE program aimed at the structurally unemployed creates more jobs per GNP dollar than other policies. (SK)

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 third special report of the National Commission for Manpower Policy provides information regarding the ways that European nations were dealing with complex manpower problems similar to the ones faced by the United States during the recession of 1974-1975. Following a brief introductory section, section 2 reviews the methods used by the…

The federal government needs to provide employment and training assistance to help dislocated workers to become reemployed. Worker mobility assistance should not be focused upon as a major thrust of reemployment programs, since American workers are remarkably resistant to pressures to move to more promising labor markets. Efficient and effective…

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…

This study demonstrates that the Public Service Employment (PSE) program had a significant net job-creation impact in 1978 and 1979. The difference in the estimates for these two years and fiscal 1977 indicate a substantial effect from the changes in the program's design, including tighter eligibility criteria and requirement of a project approach…

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…

The feasibility of large-scale, countercyclical public job-creation was assessed. Focus was on how many job-creating activities could be undertaken as well as the job-creation potential and costs of these activities. Data was collected through field visits made to Washington-based federal government and national organizations and to twenty-four…

This second of a three-volume report of a study done to assess the feasibility of large-scale, countercyclical public job creation contains chapter 2 of the report on the methods and findings with respect to job-creating activities, their job-creation potential, and related characteristics. (Volume 1, comprised of the report's first chapter,…