PERSPECTIVE ON EMPLOYMENT : Springboards Instead of Safety Nets : Our old methods aren’t going to provide people with the skills to find good jobs intoday’s economy.

Here are some dreamers of the American dream:

George had put in more than 20 years at the factory when, suddenly, he lost his job. Now, he’s 41 and down to his last month of unemployment benefits.

Alycia is only 17. She’s a high-school dropout--she quit school when she got pregnant--and is living on welfare and food stamps.

Peg is twice Alycia’s age and married. She works for the minimum wage at a local food store. Between them, Peg and her husband manage to pay the bills on about $18,000 a year.

Dave has worked his way up to be a supervisor at a defense plant. Dave is making a decent salary, and his company pays half the cost of health care for Dave and his family. But the company is downsizing. Dave can’t count on keeping his paycheck or his health insurance. He’s 50.

Have these people come to a dead end? Not at all.

George, Alycia, Peg and Dave are American success stories in the making. I met them recently at a community college in the Midwest. George is learning to program and operate advanced machine tools, and is on track to surpass his old salary when he returns to work. Alycia is a few months away from finishing a course in desktop publishing and a starting salary three times that of her welfare check. Peg is working to be a nurse practitioner. Dave is learning techniques for removing toxic wastes from the soil; an engineering firm is waiting to hire him as soon as he finishes his studies.

While there’s no sure thing in today’s economy, I’m betting on a good future for these four people. They’ve figured out what skills will pay off, and they’ve figured out how to get those skills. But not every worker can find or follow that path to new work. Millions of people just like George, Alycia, Peg and Dave--who are eager to work, who want to make their contribution to the economy and earn a better life in the process--are stuck in dead-end jobs, at risk of sudden job loss or poised at the precipice of poverty because they lack the right skills.

Too many Americans find their paths to the new economy blocked. But we tend to separate this systematic problem into a set of distinct issues--welfare reform, the minimum wage, health-care security, defense conversion, unemployment insurance reform--and thus miss the common theme. The underlying goal is simple: Every able-bodied American should have a chance at rewarding work. Achieving this goal, though, is not so simple.

Our social “safety nets” aren’t organized to get people the skills they need for good jobs in today’s economy. They evolved decades ago, when a mass-production economy offered good jobs even to the unskilled. Those who weren’t working presumably couldn’t work at all, or couldn’t find a job, and needed income support rather than help getting a good job.

Aid to Families with Dependent Children targeted mothers who lacked a male breadwinner in an era when mothers with young children were not expected to work. But today, most mothers are back at work by the time their children are toddlers. In fact, 70% of AFDC mothers move into jobs within two years of getting their first welfare check. Their main problem is finding and retaining good jobs, with wages and benefits high enough to keep them out of poverty and off welfare for good.

Unemployment insurance, another legacy of the mass-production economy, was meant to tide over laid-off workers until the economy rebounded and they got their old jobs back. That’s why it still ends after six months--the length of the typical layoff--even though 75% of today’s job losers are never called back. Instead of supporting temporary unemployment, we need to speed job losers into reemployment.

The minimum wage was long thought of as part of the safety net, mainly for teen-agers or spouses whose work supplemented family income. But the average minimum-wage worker today brings home half of the family earnings. Raising it is necessary, but that alone is insufficient for low-wage workers. They also need help getting better work.

We can’t bring back the old economy and we shouldn’t try. Today’s information-based economy--much touted by Speaker Newt Gingrich and like-minded futurists--offers enormous opportunity. Corporate profits are up, innovation is accelerating, and Americans with the right education and skills are doing better than ever.

But the path from the old economy to the new is perilous. Too many Americans remain ill-equipped for the trip. Those without training beyond high school face falling earnings; 16% of full-time workers can’t earn enough to keep a family of four out of poverty. And well over half a million workers were fired last year alone as companies “reengineered” themselves.

That’s why this Administration is so intent on preparing Americans for the journey to new work: School-to-work apprenticeships, low-cost student loans, tax deductions for education and job training, job placement and training for welfare recipients, one-stop career centers with computerized job information. In short, we’re trying to transform the old “safety-net”--deployed to rescue the old economy’s victims--into a springboard to launch all able-bodied Americans into rewarding work in the new economy.

We’re committed to this transformation not so much because springboards are cheaper then safety nets, but because this agenda affirms for the modern age some age-old American values: Work ennobles. Work gives meaning. Work should be rewarded.