Careful Analysis in the World of “Spin”: My Term as Chief Economist

Abstract

During the calendar year 1999, I served as chief economist at the Department of Labor (DOL) under Labor Secretary Alexis Herman. Because this was the seventh year of the Clinton administration, many policy decisions had already been decided. In addition, the generally sour relations between the administration and Congress ensured that few White House priorities would be enacted.Still I participated in a variety of efforts that could be counted as successes, at least to some extent. To help deal with manufacturing job loss, I helped develop a competitive program that provided grants to states to fund incumbent worker training at the firm level.1 I participated in launching the “Youth Opportunities” grants project, which provides comprehensive employment services to young people in disadvantaged neighborhoods, and worked on the evaluation component of that program. I also helped develop a program that enabled the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs to collect better data on the earnings differences between white males and other workers at federal contractor establishments. I contributed heavily to reports on the future of work in the twenty-first century and on job creation trends during the Clinton years.Of course, we also had policy failures. Our attempt to raise the federal minimum wage was unsuccessful. A desperately needed proposal to reform unemployment insurance, which included provisions to expand coverage for parttime and low-wage workers, was not even introduced in Congress. And a major disappointment was our failed attempt to gain reauthorization of the welfare- to-work grants programs, which were designed to help the most disadvantaged welfare recipients get jobs.