Even before the awful attack on our city, New York was headed toward a recession.  Our hope was that the downturn would be mild and brief.  It is hard to believe that we will be so lucky now.  
 
There will be a lengthy debate about how to rebuild the city’s economy in light of the physical and human damage we have sustained.  Many of the best ideas for building a more just city will take years to implement.  As important as it is to engage in that long-term discussion, our concern right now is more immediate.  What can we do for the tens of thousands who have already lost their jobs, and the perhaps- hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who may lose their jobs in the coming months?  We should advocate for one simple idea that can help low-wage workers right now: the immediate creation of a large-scale subsidized jobs program.  
 
In effect, this would be a vastly expanded version of the Transitional Jobs Program that the City Council passed earlier this year but the Mayor has refused to implement.  We should be talking about up to 50,000 jobs in this new program.  In addition to the people targeted by the original Transitional Jobs Program — welfare participants facing time limits — the new program should be open to workers whose jobs were destroyed by the attack, workers laid off as a secondary effect of the attack, and other workers who have been unemployed for six months or longer.  
 
To run a program this large, the Program would have to expand to include more than just city government jobs. A three-way split makes the most sense: one-third of the jobs in municipal government, one-third in the nonprofit sector, and one-third in private, for-profit small businesses impacted by the attack and its aftermath.
 
The City cannot be expected to pay for this (as it would in the City Council’s Program).  Funding could come from the State’s TANF “rainy day” fund and from the federal aid that has been promised.  The federal government should provide a two-for-one match for each dollar coming from the State.
 
Mark Levitan is a Senior Policy Analyist at the Community Service Society.

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