Coalition Launches Jobs for America Now

The campaign promoting substantial new jobs plans to address the unemployment crisis got a real boost with the formation of Jobs for America Now, a major coalition of more than fifty national organizations including Working America.

In announcing this broad coalition of labor, civil rights, community and progressive policy groups, the groups noted how they had come out of last month’s jobs policy initiative at the Economic Policy Institute.

On Nov. 17, the leaders of the AFL-CIO, Center for Community Change, Economic Policy Institute, Leadership Conference for Civil Rights, NAACP and National Council of La Raza issued an urgent call for legislation to address the jobs crisis in the U.S.

Since then, the coalition has expanded to include more than 50 national groups and nearly 100 local and state organizations.

The coalition supports expanded job-creation policies, including the five-point plan promoted by the AFL-CIO.

Jobs for America Now has issued an urgent call for action to address the jobs crisis:

The U.S. unemployment rate exceeded 10% in October for the first time in a quarter century. Over 15 million Americans are able and willing to work but cannot find a job. More than one out of every three unemployed workers has been out of a job for more than six months. The situation facing African American and Latino workers is even bleaker, with unemployment at 15.6% and 12.7%, respectively.

These grim statistics don’t capture the full extent of the hardship. There are another 9 million people working part time because they cannot find full-time work. Millions of others have given up looking for a job, and so aren’t counted in the official unemployment figures. Altogether, over 17% of the labor force is underemployed—more than 26 million Americans—including one in four minority workers. Last, given individuals moving in and out of jobs, we can expect a third of the workforce, and 40% of workers of color, to be unemployed or underemployed at some point over the next year.

Despite an effective and bold recovery package we are still facing a prolonged period of high unemployment. Two years from now, absent further action, we are likely to have unemployment at 8% or more, a higher rate than that attained even at the worst point of the last two downturns.

The president and the Congress have already taken significant steps to stop the economy’s nosedive. Their efforts have already created over a million jobs and led to renewed economic growth in the third quarter of 2009. But it is clear that much more must be done to generate millions more jobs to assure a robust recovery that reaches all Americans.

The Jobs for America Now coalition launch came just as the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed the Jobs for Main Street Act, the first of what should be several substantial new job-creation measures.