Most of these public service jobs are apparently needed in schools, health centers, recreation, welfare, and protective service agencies (see Table XI). Their distribution by size of city is shown in Table XII. Table XI Projected Additional Public Service Job Possibilities Note: Based on replies of 34 cities. Excludes answers to "other" categories. Columns may not add to 100 because of rounding. Total Table XII Projected Additional Public Service Job Possibilities by Size of City (in percent) New public service positions Size of city 100,000-250,000 250,000-750,000 750,000 or more Percentages based on Note: Based on replies of 34 cities. Excludes answers to "other" categories. This survey of local governments concentrated on a limited approach to the need to estimate on an intelligent basis essentially those manpower needs just for the expansion of existing local urban government programs; it was limited further to a small number of such functions in cities with a population of 100,000 or more. The implications of this survey include the following: A. The fact that the estimates pertain primarily to existing programs suggests that the additional jobs could be filled without too much delay if funds could be made available. B. For a number of reasons, the figure of 140,000 is a minimum estimate of the overall potential of public service employment. First, the data on which the number is based exclude many other municipal functions not asked about in the survey. Second, the estimates apply only to urban places of over 100,000 population-which encompass about one-third of the total population in the United States. Third, they do not include any estimates from nonprofit private organizations in equal, if not greater, need of expansion of their services in urban and rural areas. Fourth, the 140,000 figure does not include the estimates by the mayors of some cities volunteering responses to the "other" category in the questionnaire. (If the "other" category is used in the estimate, it is safe to add an additional 10,000 job possibilities in public service employment for inner-city residents, raising the minimum estimate to 150,000 for cities of over 100,000.) Fifth, it must be remembered that the 150,000 figure excludes an identical estimate for professional and technical personnel needed in these few public service categories. We are talking here only about nonprofessional-or "subprofessional" jobs. C. There is another significant reason for considering the estimate of 140,000 to 150,000 to be a conservative figure. It has to do with the possibility that too little though: has been given by city administrators to the actual extent of need for expanded and new public services. Antipollution enforcement is one example. This is a new and growing area of public concern, and in the next few years the manpower and personnel aspects of the enforcement and implementation of antipollution and other environmental health measures can be expected to become a major administrative challenge to urban areas. It is extremely doubtful that among the 130 cities with over 100,000 population only 1,700 additional positions—as determined by the estimates of the 34 cities providing information-will be required to carry out such measures. Not only do we have a backlog of unmet public service needs: there is also a vast amount of unanticipated and unplanned needs for which little preparation has been made. In strong contrast to those students of manpower projections who foresee fewer and fewer jobs, there are other persons (including this writer) who fear that we have not begun to prepare for the wide and expanding range of human and public service functions that will be necessary to make life viable in our urban areas—that we will have a need for more and more employees. D. In this connection, it may also be pertinent to mention that the need for such public service may be accelerated by growth in the private sector of our economy and society. This need, in other words, is not sui generis, i.e., something that develops by itself in isolation from other conditions and trends. For example, in the use of automobiles and trucks by the private sector of the urban economy, certain public-function needs must be met such as driver education, vehicle inspection, traffic and parking control, highway construction and maintenance, and air pollution control. E. It may be pushing the point too far, but a further effect of the employment of an additional 150,000 professionals and another 150,000 nonprofessionals in the public sector at the local level alone would be to place new purchasing power into the total economy of the country which in turn could provide a more realistic demand for increased employment in the private sector. In this indirect way (rather than via direct employment at first of the so-called "unemployables" through exhortation and goodwill) an intrinsic demand among private employers for more workers would result. At the present time, however, the demand is not enough to absorb all (or a substantial majority of) these jobseekers. Despite all the moral and practical reasons for the contemporary involvement of the private sector in the urban job crisis, if there is no such intrinsic employer demand for thousands of more workers, that crisis will not be effectively overcome. F. New needs in the public service sector of urban America are emerging; these, along with older unmet needs, will require, first of all, the design of new occupations for residents of the inner city; second, the effective recruitment and training of these residents; third, their placement in appropriate agencies in the city after training (or perhaps after being trained on the job in those agencies); and finally, the development of techniques of what might be called "job maintenance" in order to keep such inner-city residents attracted to these new positions. Summary The solution to our problems of "hard-core" unemployment and underemployment must combine (a) the current efforts of the private sector to train and hire; with (b) the expansion and provision of public services at various levels of government and in nonprofit organizations. Neither approach by itself will go very far in meeting the urgent needs of the unemployed and the general community. The overall picture is of an economy and society with many unmet needs— unfilled jobs and with the potential means to meet the needs and fill the jobs -potential only because we have not placed a high enough priority on the goal of providing the services to meet the needs, and thus to create the jobs involved. It is rather ironic that by 1975, according to an estimate by the National Planning Association in a report for the Manpower Administration, Manpower Requirements for National Objectives in the 1970's, we shall need 10 million more individuals to fill the optimum manpower requirements of the nation than we are likely to have in the total labor force. Compared to 1962, we shall need, in 1975, nearly twice as many workers in education and health services; nearly twice as many in social welfare; about 60 percent more in housing programs; and 60 percent more in urban development. The percentage increases in the various other public service categories are almost as high, if not higher. If the 1-to-1 ratio in the Sheppard study for the Urban Coalition is any basis for estimating what portion of the extra jobs in these categories might be filled by underemployed and nonprofessional persons, the estimate would be about 8.5 million in just health and education, housing, social welfare, and urban development. At any rate, there is an urgent need to start now in 1968 to take the necessary first steps toward providing the much needed public services-and thus the accompanying new jobs for the unemployed and underemployed if we are to realize to any degree the national aspiration goals for 1975-a short seven years away. These first steps include the passage of legislation to create the public service employment jobs at local, county, state, and national levels of government; a more rational and improved program-with realistic recognition of the intrinsic demand problem-of private industry training and hiring of the hard-core unemployed and underemployed; and, of course, the maintenance of those fiscal and monetary policies conducive to a "full-employment" economy. |