Mr. President, Don’t Abandon Investing in Human Capital
Recently, President Biden reached a tentative deal on a bipartisan infrastructure bill comprising $1.2 trillion in funding for roads, bridges, tunnels, rail, and broadband internet. Negotiations remain fraught, with the still-unwritten bill failing a Wednesday procedural vote and Democratic Senators forming their own plan in a $3.5 trillion budget resolution, but the bipartisan negotiators remain — at least outwardly — hopeful of their compromise.
Even if it does pass, however, the bill may leave a crucial issue on the cutting room floor. The President and Congress cannot ignore the most important infrastructure investment America needs: investment in human capital.
In the Spring, President Biden touted his American Jobs Plan as a once-in-a generation opportunity to reimagine our economy and reshape our workforce. It proposed $100 billion for workforce development, including in programs that “pair job creation efforts with next generation training programs” and that “target workforce development opportunities in underserved communities.” Now, that funding is at serious risk of being cut from the plan, when our country needs it most.
The American Jobs Plan should be the vehicle to connect career training and employment to marginalized people, such as those with criminal backgrounds, precarious housing, or lack of education. For generations, these individuals have been systematically excluded from the mainstream economy and denied opportunity. They have experienced divestment in human capital including failing schools, substandard housing, unequal access to healthcare, and the inability to obtain living wage jobs. Street homelessness, mass incarceration, and drug abuse are visible symptoms of these systemic failures.
This lack of investment hurts our entire country. The un- and under-employment of people who have experienced incarceration leads to a loss of 1.7–1.9 million workers and between $78-$87 billion in GDP per year. Of the more than 550,000 people experiencing homelessness in America, an estimated 78% are jobless or underemployed. Individuals with histories of incarceration have an unemployment rate of over 27% and are nearly 10 times more likely to experience homelessness than the general public. This is worrisome because employment is the single most important factor in decreasing recidivism; rates are nearly halved for formerly incarcerated people who have full-time jobs versus those who are unemployed.
As the nonpartisan Hechinger Report noted of the American Jobs Plan in June, “many of the industries needed to complete this work are already struggling to find skilled labor — despite relatively high salaries and comparatively good benefits.” These labor shortages can be filled by the most marginalized among us, but it will take coordinated, complementary efforts with supportive service and workforce development providers to reach them.
This cannot be done without federal support. And rather than debating whether to cut workforce development funding from the bill, elected officials would better serve the American people by going bigger: beyond jobs and career training, investment in human capital must also include basic support services for those needing stable housing, behavioral healthcare, sobriety support, and access to basic education. Specifically, programs that bridge the gap from homelessness and incarceration to employment need to be part of the solution, alongside trade schools and traditional workforce development institutions.
We can pave the way to an inclusive recovery by investing in career training for vulnerable populations based on local demands, including in emerging sectors and skilled trades facing hiring shortages, as well as by prioritizing access to union apprenticeships for underserved communities. Skills-based training that reaches people experiencing homelessness and with histories of incarceration will ensure that the benefits of a bipartisan recovery plan are felt far beyond our highways and bridges.
Isabel McDevitt is the Executive Vice President of The Doe Fund.
