Alabama politicians chase so many imaginary problems that it’s worth noting when they dialogue with reality.
For example, the recent creation by Gov. Kay Ivey and state legislators of a commission to study the state’s chronically low workforce participation rate.
It’s a real problem.
Now we’ll just have to see how serious they are about real-world solutions.
First, some definitions. The workforce participation rate is the percentage of the population working or looking for work. The unemployment rate is the percentage of people who aren’t working but are looking for a job.
Alabama’s unemployment numbers are great. Unemployment stood at 2.3% in October, better than the national rate of 3.9%, and way below the 4% to 5% generally considered full employment.
But the percentage of people working in Alabama is another story. The state’s workforce participation number in October was 57%, lower than the national average of 62.7%.
And before you start harrumphing that this shows that nobody wants to work anymore, take a step over to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which has a host of data on this topic.
The workforce participation rate in Alabama in October 1976 — 47 years ago — was 57.5%. Barely distinguishable from today’s rate.
Over the next 20 years, the number went up, peaking at 65.1% in July 1997. It slid below 60% in August 2010 and has remained there ever since.
There’s never been a time when more Alabamians worked than the nation as a whole. Alabama’s participation rates trailed the nation in 1976. And in 2010. And today. Even at its 1997 peak, Alabama was two points below the national numbers.
Why?
Part of it is age. As the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis notes, low workforce participation can be a sign of an older population, and our state has that. Alabama’s median age is higher than the nation’s (and it’s higher still in the state’s white population). About 18% of Alabama’s population is over the age of 65, compared with 17.3% nationally.
Other issues loom, as experts told a special committee formed to explore the issue.
A lack of transportation is one. Outside the cities, mass transit doesn’t exist, making it difficult for low-income workers who lack access to a car to get to where they need to go.
A lack of affordable child care is another. One of the saddest and happiest days of my life was when I wrote my final check for day care for our youngest child: sad that she was growing up; happy that a major drain on our finances was ending.
Getting good child care is hard enough; paying for it can be so difficult that it may make sense for one parent to stay home, even with the economic hit that entails.
Business owners also said a lack of training — where workers get training for the jobs they want or employers train people to get the people they need — was another factor.
So we know the problem.
But I have very little faith that legislators will commit to a full solution.
Expectations
Child care costs and availability need to be addressed in the state (and the nation), but the Alabama Legislature hasn’t moved on the issue. Bills filed last year that would have extended state tax credits to employers and child care facilities went nowhere.
Transportation is an even bigger obstacle. Mass transit aside, legislators are feuding over roadwork in western Alabama, including much of the Black Belt.
And age? The obvious solution is to encourage younger immigrants to come to the state. Good luck convincing the Republican base of that.
These issues can’t be solved in a single session or with a single bill.
They’ll require sustained attention over many years. They’ll require people who campaigned on their hatred of government to use public policy to address issues. They require an electorate that can trust that efforts to alleviate a problem will not be the last attempt to address it.
And it’s so much easier for Republican legislators to pander.
Just look at some of the bills filed or proposed for next February’s legislative session.
Sen. Garlan Gudger (R-Cullman) wants to imprison people who assist voters with absentee ballots for up to 10 years.
Sen. Gerald Allen (R-Tuscaloosa) wants to amend the state constitution to require schools to play the first verse of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at least once a week. Forced patriotism is, of course, the best patriotism.
Rep. Susan DuBose (R-Hoover) has spent most of her limited time in the legislature railing against libraries and attacking the existence of transgender people. She told Alabama Daily News recently that she was broadening her portfolio to pornography identification. To paraphrase They Might Be Giants: There’s only two songs in her, and she just wrote the third.
None of this will lower child care costs or improve infrastructure in the state’s poor and rural areas.
It certainly won’t give younger people a reason to stay in Alabama or get people on the employment sidelines back in the workforce.
If anything, it merely reinforces an image of Alabama as a state more interested in jumping at ghosts and stewing over grudges than moving forward.
Anything that this commission suggests on workforce training will almost certainly pass; the legislature is full of business people who really like that. But training someone to do a job means very little if they can’t get to your workplace or can’t find someone to watch your kid while you work.
Give credit to the legislators who are trying to help people get into the workforce. But addressing those issues would require an approach to governance that most Alabama Republicans consider an anathema.
This article was published by Alabama Reflector.
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