Welfare Reform May Spark Job Crisis, City Chiefs Fear

With welfare reform picking up steam across the nation, city officials fear that urban job-seekers will outnumber available positions by wide margins, setting off a scramble to provide more public-sector jobs, housing assistance and transportation to suburban work sites.

In a 34-city survey released by the National Conference of Mayors on Friday, 92% of participating urban officials predicted that their cities will not have a sufficient number of low-skill jobs to comply with the welfare law’s work-participation requirements.

Officials in Detroit, for example, expect that entry-level positions available there this year and next will be 75,300 fewer than the number of low-skilled workers, including welfare recipients, who are seeking them. In Philadelphia, the gap is 53,400. Like many urban centers, both cities have experienced a hemorrhage of jobs over the past two decades.

Other, more prosperous cities projected more modest job shortfalls for welfare recipients required to make their way into the work force. Little Rock, Ark., predicted that it would fall 1,275 jobs short, and St. Louis projected a shortage of 6,734 jobs. But even a bustling urban center like Seattle forecast difficulties: In the next two years, Seattle will have roughly 36,500 low-skilled job-seekers vying for fewer than 16,000 jobs.

“We simply don’t have enough” jobs to meet the law’s requirements, Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell said in releasing the report.

Under terms of the landmark 1996 welfare reform legislation, states are required to have 25% of their welfare recipients in work or work training this year. By the end of 1998, they must have 30% of their caseloads engaged in such work activities.

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A booming economy has helped lift many states easily above those marks. But many cities, where welfare populations cluster, tend to lag well behind state successes in putting welfare recipients to work. Meanwhile, a high proportion of the entry-level jobs that most welfare recipients are qualified to fill are available outside city centers, in the more prosperous suburbs.

As a result of this mismatch, 84% of cities surveyed cited transportation as a problem, although nearly three-fourths said they had established programs to address it.

Rendell said the survey underscores the urgent need for Congress to earmark funds in future transportation bills to create special transit systems for the urban poor to get to jobs in the more prosperous suburbs. He added that governors--many of whom never consulted mayors in developing their states’ welfare reform plans--now must pass on to mayors a fair share both of federal funds and the power to determine how they are spent.

“The problem with this Congress is they want to do everything on the cheap,” Rendell said. “And you can’t do that.”

The survey, conducted by the bipartisan mayors’ conference, found that 81% of the 34 cities responding had observed an increase in requests for food assistance in the first half of 1997. Eighty percent of those called welfare reform a factor in that increase. Sixty percent of the cities said requests for emergency shelter had grown during the period, and 61% of those cited welfare reform as a factor.

Los Angeles reported that emergency food requests by immigrants increased 5% during the first half of 1997, and it attributed all of that increase to welfare reform. It reported no increase in legal immigrants seeking emergency shelter. The city was not able to provide detailed projections of entry-level jobs likely to become available and low-skill workers who would be vying for them. Only 13 of the 34 cities were able to provide these figures.

According to responding mayors, the limited availability of child care--and child-care funds--for those leaving welfare for work continues to be a strong concern. Nearly three-fourths of the cities reported that state aid did not cover the average cost of full-time use of day-care centers. And nearly two-thirds said it was not enough to cover the cost of home-based child care.

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On the employment front, the survey points to a couple of bright spots: City officials said they believe that they have above-average odds of creating community-service jobs. And all said local private employers were willing to hire welfare recipients. They noted that most cities were enjoying particular success in developing partnerships with restaurant associations, other government agencies and local business.

“Employers are desperate to generate new supplies of qualified workers,” reported the office of Denver Mayor Wellington E. Webb. “The challenge is getting welfare recipients to meet minimum qualifications, as well as to improve their ability to retain jobs.”