What kind of jobs can you expect from the New New Deal?

In the 1930s, with unemployment nearing a mind-boggling 24 percent, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal created the Works Progress Administration, which put more than 8 million men and women to work doing everything from building bridges, golf courses, parks and schools that still populate the national landscape (New York’s Triborough Bridge and Minneapolis’ Walker Arts Center, for example), to more obscure localized tasks such as decorating fire hydrants and ever-important research on the production and efficiency of safety pins. Such unusual WPA projects actually inspired a new term, “boondoggle,” which meant any job or activity that is wasteful or trivial. Go ahead and say it. “Boondoggle.” Feels good, doesn’t it?

With President Obama one day into office and zeroing in on his own new New Deal to keep Americans working by refurbishing the country – last week Obama approved an economic recovery bill by House Democrats that would spend two years putting over 4 million Americans to work – Newsweek’s Kurt Soller wonders, “What sorts of careers will these be?”

It seems there will be less boondoggling (say it again, it’s just so much fun) in Obama’s new WPA than FDR’s original, so sorry to burst the bubbles of all you safety pin enthusiasts. Much of the work this time around will focus on infrastructure improvement – priority will be placed on projects like retrofitting federal buildings with modern technology, contributions to greening the country more broadly and ensuring that the United States builds on its digital capacity. The end result, says Soller, will be incremental improvements to existing structures rather than new projects built from scratch. Soller continues:

“So while we may not end this economic downturn with a slew of new parks and pools, we could end up with other unexpected benefits: for example, completely public wireless Internet access; a shorter commute on newly decongested highways; or, for those who live in cities, subway cars that aren't so crowded.”

Sounds great to us! Now all that’s left is for Congress to get to work so that, as Soller says, all of us can get back to work too.

Of course, if laying pipes and public works aren't your kinds of projects, you can always jumpstart your job search at Vault and the New York Public Library's incredible "Back To Work" event. Info and registration available here.

The New New Deal [Newsweek]

--Posted by Steven Schiff, Vault News & Commentary