Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Which Candidate Will Champion Job Creation?

"High neighborhood joblessness has a far more devastating effect than high neighborhood poverty."

Which candidate for governor will make jobs their priority? Are any of them up for guaranteeing a job for every Oregonians? What about lowering taxes to attract more businesses? Whatever the avenue, what’s clear is that Oregonians need good jobs now. 

In 1996, William Julies Wilson shared a surprising finding: "High neighborhood joblessness has a far more devastating effect than high neighborhood poverty." Two decades later, we've failed to learn this lesson and are still suffering the consequences. Back then, Wilson warned that “[n]eighborhoods plagued by high levels of joblessness are more likely to experience low levels of social organization: the two go hand in hand.” Today, we’re seeing the cost of social disorganization: crime, drugs, poverty, and isolation. 

Wilson’s finding should lead us to focus less on the unemployment rate and more on the labor force participation rate. This may sound like squabbling over two wonky terms but the difference between the two matters. The unemployment rate measures the percentage of individuals in the labor market without a job. The labor force participation rate measures the percentage of working age individuals with jobs or actively looking for employment. The individuals out of the labor market may be disabled, depressed, or dissociated from their community. Whatever the case, these individuals were red flags for Wilson and should be causes for concern today. 

Back in 2019, it was already clear that certain counties were more likely than others to be spiraling from the perfect storm of industrialization and urbanization. As outlined by the Oregon Employment Department, there’s huge disparities in the labor force participation rate among Oregon counties.

Some of this variation can be explained by demographics. Counties, such as Lane and Benton, with a high number of younger individuals likely to be in some form of school or training tend to have lower labor force participation rates. Still, the general trend for rural counties to have drastically lower labor force participation rates should have been garnering headlines years ago. Two years and a pandemic later, it’s almost certain that conditions have worsened — after all, Wilson forecasted that those communities on the spiral toward social disorganization would continue their descent absent intervention. 

As evidenced by the disparities between counties, the costs of social disorganization have landed on a small slice of community members and have compounded over time. As social disorganization worsens, the odds of any individual thriving diminish as institutions leave, employers flee, and hope diminishes. Some have managed to escape these conditions, but they’re the exception and, in their wake, they leave an even worse off community. 

“The lower population density in turn creates additional problems,” Wilson realized. “Abandoned buildings increase and often serve as havens for crack use and other illegal enterprises that give criminals — mostly young blacks who are unemployed -- footholds in the community. Precipitous declines in density also make it even more difficult to sustain or develop a sense of community. The feeling of safety in numbers is completely lacking in such neighborhoods.” Though some of Wilson’s specific fears are dated and based on flawed conceptions, the general concern about communities spiraling into deep holes of joblessness survives the test of time.  

Oregon cannot become a state where opportunity only exists in pockets. Yet, that’s what the status quo will produce. Wilson recognized that disparities in social organization will lead to the sorts of cultural clashes we’ve seen break out in Portland and elsewhere. This is a direct result from joblessness, according to Wilson. “[W]here jobs are scarce, many people eventually lose their feeling of connectedness to work in the formal economy; they no longer expect work to be a regular, and regulating, force in their lives.”

There’s no silver bullet for reversing joblessness where it seems to have become a fact of life. Wilson points out that schools have to be a part of the solution — preparing students for the “real world” by equipping them with employable skills. Child care must also be on the table. Parents need affordable child care to keep their jobs and pursue professional development opportunities. Finally, we need a more regional approach to government -- better sharing the resources of the “haves” with the “yet-to-haves” by creating regional transit networks, more affordable housing across the state, and consolidating governments. 

Addressing joblessness must be a priority for every candidate. Every Oregon child should grow up in an area where they can “anticipate a future of economic mobility and harbor the hopes and aspirations that for so many of their fellow citizens help define the American way of life.”

Kevin Frazier edits The Oregon Way. He’s a student at the Harvard Kennedy School and the UC Berkeley School of Law. After graduation in May of 2022, he looks forward to finding his way home to Oregon.