Above: A CCC enrollee constructing a building in Virginia, between 1935 and 1942. The CCC created jobs for about 3,190,000 people, and about 2,926,000 of those were the enrollees - mostly young men, but also some older folks, e.g., military veterans (Perry H. Merrill, Roosevelt's Forest Army: A History of the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942, 1981, p. 196). Photo from the Library of Congress.
Above: CWA workers at Antietam National Battlefield and Cemetery (Sharpsburg, Maryland). During the winter of 1933-1934, the CWA hired 4,263,000 people in need of jobs, and laid the groundwork for future work-relief programs, especially the WPA. Photo from the National Park Service.
Above: New Deal work programs were infrastructure-heavy, but there were lots of jobs for other types of workers too, such as these artists hired through the Work Division of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) to create educational visual aids for schools. From 1934-1935, the Work Division provided work for well over 2.4 million men and women (Work Division final report, p. 1). Photo from the Work Division's final report.
Above: A WPA road crew in Boise, Idaho, ca. 1937. Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA employed 8.5 million different Americans (WPA final report, pp. III and 46). They built airports, made housekeeping visits to those in need, watched over children in nursery schools, created or improved city parks, made art for public places, preserved family histories for millions of Americans, conducted free recreation activities, and much more. Photo from the National Archives.
Above: The WPA employed actors and musicians in need of jobs... to give free or low-cost performances to Americans all across the country. This is a WPA Theatre scene in Los Angeless, between 1935 and 1939. Photo from the National Archives.
Above: About 4,800,000 young men and women found employment in the National Youth Administration (NYA), such as these young adults running a children's camp in Chepachet, Rhode Island, ca. 1940. NYA workers did similar jobs as seen in the other work-relief programs, but there was a greater emphasis on job training. Photo from the National Archives.
Above: One of the many goals of New Deal work-relief programs was to get folks into more regular employment - in the private sector or regular government positions. This was done through job training--especially in the CCC and NYA--or simply by tiding workers over, with their modest-paying work-relief jobs, until they found job openings. The chart above shows where some NYA enrollees went after they left their NYA jobs. Image from the NYA's final report, p. 260.
Above: All of the New Deal's work-relief agencies had a presence in Puerto Rico, but especially interesting were the Puerto Rico Emergency Relief Administration (PRERA) which managed FERA funds, and the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (PRRA). These agencies hired tens of thousands of unemployed Puerto Ricans to vastly improve the island's infrastructure, healthcare, natural resources, and educational facilities. Photo from a 1939 report detailing PRERA and FERA activities from 1934 to 1936.
Above: Another project in Puerto Rico, built with funding from FERA. Photo from a 1934 PRERA report.
Above: In addition to work-relief, some New Deal agencies, such as the Public Works Administration (PWA) and the United States Housing Authority (USHA), kept private contractors busy during the 1930s and early 40s. This and the general economic improvement caused by other New Deal public policies helped reduce unemployment from the 22.9% experienced in 1932 to 6% in 1941 (see next chart). Table above from the 1941 annual report of the Federal Works Agency.
Above: When Americans on work-relief (e.g., CCC and WPA) are factored in--the third and fourth columns in the chart above--the unemployment rates for the New Deal years are far lower than the numbers we've been accustomed to hearing. And it never made much sense to exclude them. If you're offered a job to help build a bridge, for example, and accept the job, start working on the job, and get a paycheck for the job, is that not a job? They were temporary jobs, yes, but so are contractual jobs, military enlistments, and jobs that unexpectedly end with layoffs. Do we count people in those groups as unemployed even as they're working? The chart above is from: Michael R. Darby, "Three-and-a-Half Millions U.S. Employees Have Been Mislaid: Or, an Explanation of Unemployment, 1934-1941," Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 84, No. 1 (Feb., 1976), pp. 1-16.
Above: A bottling plant in Christiansted, Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, 1941. The revival of industry in the Virgin Islands, for example, the sugar and rum industries, was carried out by the PWA-funded Virgin Islands Company and greatly relieved unemployment. Photo by Jack Delano, Farm Security Administration, courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Above: Even after the core years of the New Deal (about 1933-1943) were over the New Deal continued creating jobs. For example, how many millions of jobs have been created by the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), either directly--such as the decades of employment in the hundreds of REA-financed electric cooperatives--or, through the businesses and industries they've powered for decades (a service which the private sector was not interested in providing)? In the book above, from 1965, the REA-financed Traverse Electric Cooperative tells us that "under the leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Senator George W. Norris, Representative Sam Rayburn and others, the Rural Electrification program became a reality... Look about you in the early dark of evening or before dawn. A city of yard lights glow about. They are a monument to a great accomplishment of rural people with the aid of a wise government." Image scanned from a personal copy.
Above: Airplanes at the WPA-built La Guardia Airport, 1939 - one of the many airports America used to expand its economy after World War II. In the three decades after the war, America became the undisputed economic powerhouse of the world and the middle-class grew with a vibrancy not seen before or since. Credit for this expansion is almost always given--and often exclusively--to the war itself. But this overlooks or ignores the vast infrastructure created by the New Deal, not to mention the legislation, for example, Social Security, FDIC, protections for unions, and minimum working standards established by the Fair Labor Standards Act. While the war certainly played a role, the reality is that the economy expanded along New Deal roads, across New Deal bridges, out of New Deal airports, in the docks and warehouses of New Deal coastal seaports, through New Deal electric lines, and from a network of New Deal water mains and wastewater treatment plants (the arteries and veins that new communities and businesses need). Further, the technical expertise to develop new industries, and to train workers for those industries, was often formed and carried out in schools, trade schools, colleges, and universities that the New Deal built or improved - and that FDR made more accessible through the G.I. Bill. So, how many millions of jobs has the New Deal created in this regard? Tens of millions? Hundreds of millions? Photo from the National Archives.
The Real Job Creator
To sum things up...
The New Deal created about 22 million work-relief jobs and created (or preserved) many millions of private sector jobs during the 1930s and early 40s. The unemployment rate dropped substantially, but admittedly was not completely licked (it's important to note, however, that many industries were replacing workers with machines during this time frame).
The increased government spending of World War II virtually eliminated the remaining unemployment; and the war itself was won, by the way, with earlier New Deal investments: in people (especially the CCC and NYA); in infrastructure (roads, bridges, airports, electricity); and in equipment and facilities for the armed forces (ships, shipyards, military base improvements).
After World War II, the working-class and economy expanded on a foundation of sturdy New Deal public policy and public works. Unemployment never again reached Great Depression levels, or the levels caused by the Panic of 1893. For about 30 years after the war, the working-class saw dramatic increases in wages, levels of home ownership, personal savings, and retirement security. There were bumps along the way, of course, but it was generally an era of economic and working-class abundance - the best we ever had.
Since about the 1980s, with the development of anti-New Deal, supply-side, and neoliberal economic policies and philosophy--consisting of shareholder primacy, financial deregulation (e.g., allowing more stock buybacks and repealing Glass-Steagall), large tax cuts for the wealthy, and exporting good-paying manufacturing jobs to lower-paying foreign labor markets--the working-class has seen stagnant wages, stagnant levels of home ownership, reduced personal savings, and less retirement security.
The response to the downfall of the working-class, from many policymakers, wealthy political donors, and media personalities, has been to blame the working-class ("they're lazy," "they're jealous," "they just want free stuff"); to undermine unions (unions being one of the main roadblocks to the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands); to buy-up the media (in order to control the framing of issues); and to attack the social safety net (e.g., cutting Medicaid and food assistance, and relentlessly trying to raise the age at which workers can begin receiving their Social Security benefits). In other words, trickle-down economics has not delivered on its promises, so now its promoters are blaming and burdening workers.
The New Deal was the real job creator, catapulting the U.S. economy and its labor force to the top - with jobs that paid well and provided good benefits. American workers would benefit from remembering this history... and then demanding a return to those policies and programs.
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