WPA for Today: Can the US Afford Economic Recovery?

Scott McConnell

Journal of Economic Issues, 2014, vol. 48, issue 2, 541-550

Abstract: The Great Recession of 2008, of which the economy is presently struggling to break free, posits the problem of unemployed workers. The job gap — when considering the officially unemployed, the underemployed, and those who have given up looking for work — is well above twenty million workers. This issue is reminiscent of the Great Depression of the 1930s, when there were calls for federal assistance in finding jobs for those unemployed, including direct job creation. As a result, "emergency workers" were employed by the federal government, under the especially created Works Progress Administration (WPA), and became an important part of the economic recovery. In addition to these well-known civilian works programs, this paper will consider new recruits to the military as "emergency workers" following the US entry into WWII. The paper seeks to imagine a WPA for today by outlining what level of investment by the federal government would be required to replicate the same collective program today.

Date: 2014
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DOI: 10.2753/JEI0021-3624480230

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