WASHINGTON (VR) – Over 25,000 people are unemployed in the nation’s capital, Washington DC, according to the Department of Labor. However, the region is not lacking for jobs.
“There’s no shortage of jobs relative to the number of people who need jobs,” said Judy Berman, of DC Appleseed, a non-partisan organization based in Washington that conducts research on employment and aims to solve problems affecting DC area residents. “It’s really about the match, in making sure that the people who are here can be trained in the skills that are necessary for the jobs,” she said.
Berman told Radio VR that the District has close to full employment among the higher educated population, “particularly… residents with bachelor degrees or higher”. Full employment has been described by Robert Pollin, Co-director and Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, as “something like 3 ½ percent unemployment.”
What brings the District to an average of 7.5 percent, the current rate, is the “extraordinarily high unemployment rate among less educated… residents”, said Berman.
The DC metro area had about 25,000 job openings between December 2012 and December 2013, explained Berman. “The market is trending here toward higher wage jobs, typically jobs that require more education… though some, like RN, might be available to someone with an AA rather than a BA, they typically are not available to anyone with only a high school diploma or less,” she said.
Berman told Radio VR that there are over 60,000 adults in the District who do not have a high school diploma or its equivalent and probably a total of about 80,000 who lack basic skills.
She said that by 2018, “at least 70% of jobs in this area will require some education beyond high school, for which the 60,000-80,000 who are lacking basic skills would not qualify.”
She explained that the way forward is to create “career pathways”, which is a concept whereby people are encouraged and supported to increase their skills while earning industry recognized credentials that will enable them to get increasingly lucrative jobs on a particular career path.
David Washington, 45, a DC area resident who currently works at the Capital Area Food Bank, is a testament to the utility behind a “career pathways” approach to unemployment.
David Washington, self portrait.
Washington told Radio VR that he is a “returning citizen”, which means that he was in prison for a number of years.
“When I first came home I went through various agencies and unemployment systems”, he said.
Then he heard about ‘Project Empowerment’, which is a program run by the Department of Employment Services (DOES) that provides job training, experience, and search assistance to the hardest to serve populations in the District.
Najla Haywood, the Communications Program Manager at DOES said that Project Empowerment tries to serve people with “extreme barriers such as low literacy rates [or a] previous conviction… train them for interviews and match them with employers.”
She said that barriers to employment could be things as mundane as “childcare or transportation costs.”
Judy Berman explained that there are many hurdles for low-income families trying to get employed, stay employed, and move up in society.
She said that a person might be enrolled in a program to “skill up”, as she put it, but then their hours change at work, which frequently happens in low-wage jobs, and they have to drop out of the program in order to keep the job and pay their bills.
David Washington gushed over Project Empowerment’s extensive training and that it was able to place him with an employer.
“They support your efforts for success”, he told Radio VR, “by giving you money to get there, giving you money to go home, and paying you while they training you.”
“No other place is paying you to go for interviews,” he furthered, “no other place is giving you tokens, no other place is giving you lunch money or transportation money, or support if you don’t get a job, you can go back for 3 weeks and continue. So it’s one of the most, I would say, beneficial programs in the city,” he said.
Other unemployment programs, both publically and privately funded, exist in Washington DC and all over the country, such as Lift, which aims to help people become economically stable through job training, housing assistance, and goal setting.
However, Washington, who went through numerous career training programs upon being released, always refers people to Project Empowerment “because of what I know I accomplished myself,” he said. “It gives you an extensive training and a placement,” he continued.
Clearly, though, not everyone is being reached.
Outside of a Home Depot in Northeast, Washington DC, groups of men collect daily and mill around the side of the store waiting for part-time day work as laborers. They offer their muscle for contractors and laymen that need short-term work for landscaping or construction jobs.
Dave, in his “40s”, a tall African-American man, who declined to leave his last name, told Radio VR that he came to DC from Michigan five years ago because of a shortage of jobs in Detroit, where he’s from. In 2009, Michigan had an official unemployment rate of 14.2 percent, according to the Department of Labor.
Home Depot, Northeast, Washington DC. Dave is second to right with his arm raised. Photo: © Sean Nevins.
Our conversation was cut short after a white Toyota Four Runner stopped at the curb about 10 feet away looking for day workers. Dave, likely due in part to his muscular physique, convinced the driver to recruit him for the job amongst about 15 others who jostled around the car raising their arms trying to get noticed.
Before running over to the SUV he told Radio VR, “I’m like a serious patriot… I always wanted to come to DC. I just thought that my luck would change once I got here.”
And he was off.
