To the Editor:

Over a million people in New York State are out of work, and the United States economy is in disarray on a scale that our nation has not seen since the 1930s. By necessity, federal aid in the form of stimulus packages have focused primarily on the immediate health-care crisis, yet the economic crisis of unemployment and business failure will be long-term ones without rapid federal action.

The federal small business assistance funds are helping but will not be sufficient to re-employ millions of workers around the country. Let’s revisit what worked in the 1930s and launch a short-term 21st-Century Works Progress Administration — and fast.

The Great Depression was marked by our country’s longest period of unemployment; remaining above 14 percent from 1931 to 1940. Unfortunately, we find ourselves in similar straits today. Unemployment has skyrocketed from 3.5 percent in February to 15 percent within weeks and is still rising. A stunning 17 million Americans are newly unemployed as a result of the economic upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic — and it’s projected to hit 20 million.

Worse yet, in just a few weeks, nearly one-third of Americans under 35 have lost their jobs! What’s more, this generation of millenials are already downwardly economically mobile, and facing the second “once-in-a-lifetime” economic catastrophe of their short lives, with a majority working low-wage, retail sector, or gig-economy jobs.

This crisis has revealed the shortcomings of the post-2008 recovery, and true economic recovery will require a major mobilization of our resources targeted at out-of-school-youth and millenials.

As part of the 1930s federal response to this crisis, the Roosevelt Administration created the WPA and put millions of Americans back to work. Translated into 2020 dollars, roughly $92 billion was invested in infrastructure and cultural projects.

At its peak, the WPA employed nearly 3 million people, and the impact is still felt today in parks, infrastructure, and art. A new short-term WPA-type program is needed to bolster the creative arts and cultural institutions and to build our clean-energy infrastructure.

Let’s start with the immediate by hiring thousands to train as public health “contact tracers” to trace and stop the deadly spread of the coronavirus. The more the virus is traced, the more success there will be in stopping it and re-opening the economy. It’s short-term and it’s labor-intensive tracing.

Secondly, American arts and cultural institutions have been particularly devastated by COVID-19. The WPA leveraged America’s rich culture and talented artists, musicians, writers, naturalists, and more to create economic opportunity and lasting community impact.

The explosion of creativity that resulted created an American popular culture juggernaut that continues to inspire and create value for America. With the advent of the internet, America’s idle artists, multimedia freelancers, artisanal food and beverage makers, designers and performers, are well positioned to create the next juggernaut for the digital age. A modern investment in America’s creative economy will replicate the cultural and economic value created by the WPA.

Finally, as with our nation’s response to the Great Depression, our collective short-term response to the current crisis must be bold as well as practical. Our world faces the growing prospect of a rapidly changing and destructive global climate. Harnessing the power of a new, modern WPA, we could create millions of short-term good-paying, green jobs and transition our economy away from fossil fuels in the process.

Mobilizing the American workforce to mitigate environmental catastrophe isn’t a new idea — the WPA mobilized to save the Great Plains region from the effects of the Dust Bowl. The years-long drought displaced over 2.5 million people — but the WPA response, planting a whopping 220 million trees and installing 18,000 miles of windbreaks, continues to make the plain states inhabitable.

Mobilizing a new federal green workforce will enable projects like constructing sea walls, building renewable energy infrastructure, and restoring habitats to benefit both the economy and the planet.

We could conserve thousands of acres of open space for generations to come in an expansion of our public lands and National Parks while helping to prevent more climate-related weather disasters. The possibilities are — frankly — endless.

In what seems to be an endless array of bad news these days, we need hope that as a country we will not only endure but prosper in the end. Families need economic relief as well as a renewed belief in the American Dream in the wake of COVID-19.

Let’s establish a 21st-Century WPA in the next federal stimulus package without delay and focus on the millennials who are bearing the brunt of the economic fallout. As the famed 1890s World’s Fair architect Daniel Burnham stated, “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.” We can restore faith in our country and future while enabling men and women alike to dream again.

Patricia Fahy

Assemblymember

109th District

Editor’s note: Assemblymember Patricia Fahy represents the city of Albany and the towns of Bethlehem, Guilderland, and New Scotland in the New York State Assembly.