Poverty and lack of opportunity have consequences, not just for individuals and their families, but also for their communities. Seventy percent of homicides in Chicago occur in just twenty neighborhoods. The poverty rate in these 20 neighborhoods is more than twice as high as the poverty rate nationally and unemployment is six times higher.
I see first-hand that low-income Chicagoans desperately want good jobs with wages that support their families. But these workers often lack the education, skills, and training needed to access those quality jobs. If they are returning citizens, they face significant hurdles to employment and supporting their families. Even for those who are qualified, there remain job shortages across dozens of industries. A new report found that, in 2015, about 43 percent of black men aged 20 to 24 in Chicago’s Westside and Southside neighborhoods were neither working nor in school.
At first glance, the poverty I see in Chicago might look different from the struggles Chairman Smith sees at home in rural Nebraska. Although the faces might look different, although the challenges and experiences that brought people down might be different, we have much more in common than we think.
Wherever you live, the first step out of poverty is a good job. It sounds simple, but there are a lot of steps needed to make that happen.
The research is clear. That first job matters. Good jobs lead to other good jobs.
Workers need basic education and a way to acquire the right skills for good jobs, whether that means on-the-job training, a specialized training program, or higher education. They may need an employer who’s willing to take a chance on someone who doesn’t have much experience or has made mistakes in the past. They need to be reliable employees, and that means they need a way to get to work. If they’re parents, they need child care and paid leave so they can work and still care for their families.
The federal government has a choice. We can invest in lifting up those communities and those families. We can provide the funding for workforce development, so that when we measure program outcomes, the outcomes will be good. We can update the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and the Child Support Enforcement program to give parents opportunities to get the skills and credentials that good jobs require. We can make sure working parents have safe, quality child care available during the hours that they work. And we can stop insulting people by suggesting “work requirements" for programs that offer struggling families food or basic health care. Instead, we can acknowledge that parents are trying to support their families, but they can’t find jobs, or the jobs they do find don’t pay.
We need to do that everywhere in the country, from the city streets of Chicago to Chairman Smith’s country roads.
