No Expansion In CETA Jobs: Budget Cuts Hold Down CETA Job Expansion
Congress ^djhg Carjtfix^dminisfcration have both chbs6ip^J^^;P^^isions of a 1978 law callin^)|åÈmaså¤jVe e^p4å¨Sipn of the number of public-service jobs' whenever unemployment tops seven percent Instead, to the dismay of many liberal groups, countercyclical public service job funds have been sliced away as part of the budget balancing drive.</br></br>According to the nonbinding statement of intent in that legislation, the government should be providing ÛÓ With unemployment close to eight percent ÛÓ at least one million countercyclical public service jobs at a cost of more than $9 billion. The number of such jobs actually will drop from about 200,000 at the end of last year to 50,000 in October and will cost about $1.4 billion next year.</br></br>Whatever anyoneÛªs intent may have been two years ago, the administration has no present plans to expand public service employment ÛÓ even though Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall recently called it, ÛÏThe most effective and least inflationary way to create jobs, particularly in a recession.Û</br></br>In fact, obeying another congressional mandate in the 1978 bill that extended the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) ÛÓ that the benefits flow almost entirely to the poor and unemployed ÛÓ makes rapid expan-</br></br>When President Carter chose such an expansion of CETA jobs in 1977 as one way, to cut unemployment quickly, new job slots were added at rates up to 60.000 a month, until y more than 400.000 additional persons