SADIE T.M. ALEXANDER: OUR FIRST BLACK ECONOMIST AND HER CALL FOR A GUARANTEED JOBS PROGRAM

It's old hat by now: June's Job Report (JJR) reported that between April and May, the economy added 850,000 jobs, and that the official unemployment rate now stands at 5.9%. While significantly below the pandemic high of 14.8% that we hit in April 2020, a glance beyond JJR's top line numbers makes it clear that millions of people are still getting pummeled by the pandemic, and that it's just as important as ever for advocates of economic and racial justice to continue to fight for full employment.

Often overlooked is the fact that the current unemployment rate of 5.9% translates into about 9.5 million persons who want and are actively seeking a gig. What's more, the JJR reveals that there's 4.6 million persons who are working part-time involuntarily-- that is, they want but have not been able to bag a full time gig. On top of all of this, the JJR classifies almost 2 million persons as "marginally attached to the labor force." That group-- the "marginally attached"-- consists of those folks want work, are available for it, and have actively sought it within the past 12 months but have pretty much ghosted the search in the most recent four weeks. When you add all these numbers up--the 9.5 million unemployed, the 4.6 million working part-time involuntarily, and the 2 million "marginally attached"-- you're staring at 16 million persons. If all those folks constituted a state, they'd be the fifth largest in the nation, right behind California, Texas, Florida, and New York. So, yeah, we ain't talking peanuts here.

And then there's this: There's always millions of persons in this country who find themselves either unemployed, working part-time involuntarily, or "marginally attached" to the labor force. The size of that "state" oscillates--growing during recessions and declining during recession, for instance. But this "state" never disappears. It's position on the list moves around a bit but its existence is constant.

All of which underscores the importance of Nina Bank's recently released book, Democracy, Race, & Justice: The Speeches And Writings of Sadie T. M. Alexander.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SADIE T.M. ALEXANDER

Sadie T.M. Alexander received her doctorate in economics in 1921 from the University of Pennsylvania, and she was the first African-American--of any gender-- to receive a doctorate in economics. Like so many African-American women, gender and racial discrimination combined to block her from working as a professional economist. While she'd go on to earn a law degree from the same university, she'd never, as Bank's makes clear, stop thinking of herself as an economist and speaking and writing about the interaction between economic insecurity, racial injustice, and political authoritarianism.

What does Sadie T.M. Alexander have to do with our current economic morass in general and monthly jobs report in particular? Plenty. And nowhere is this more apparent than in her conception of full employment as central to the securing of economic justice and as a bulwark against anti-democratic forces.

FULL EMPLOYMENT: SECURING THE RIGHT TO WORK

Mainstream economists tend to be wedded to the view that, even in a strong economy, a certain amount of unemployment is necessary for the "proper" functioning of the system. The goal is never to eradicate unemployment but, rather, it's to identify just the "right" or "optimal" amount of joblessness, and then to use monetary and fiscal policies to achieve it. You don't want unemployment to be "too high" or "too low." If it's "too low"-- if it slips below the "optimal" level-- we're told that it'll set off an upward spiral in prices; It it's "too high," well, then, that's taken as an indication that were either headed toward or we're in the economic dumps. There' a certain amount of unemployment that's "natural" and, therefore, must be tolerated. There's a certain amount of folk, so we're told, that must be sacrificed at the altar of price stability. Mess around with "nature" by pushing the unemployment rate below its natural level, and we'll all get burnt in the form of an acceleration of inflation. On this score, full employment is that level of joblessness that's compatible with price stability, and according to a recent report by a couple of Federal Reserve economists, the full employment or "natural" rate of joblessness is somewhere in the range of 4.5-5.5% of the labor force searching for --but unable to find-- paid gigs. Anyway, you cut it, that's millions of folk languishing in joblessness.

One thing that Bank's book makes clear is this: Sadie T.M. Alexander's advocated a conception of full employment that's radically different from what today's mainstream economists dub the "natural" rate of unemployment. Alexander's conception of full employment is grounded in the notion of human rights and the understanding that people have a right to a job at a livable wage. For Alexander, the right thing to do is to ensure that a gig is available to all those able, ready, and willing to work. The goal is not to settle on the "right" level of involuntary joblessness but, rather, to completely eradicate it. This can be realized, says Alexander, through the provision of public sector jobs to employ all those who the private sector casts off as disposable. She found any notion of citizenship that was stripped of civil and economic rights to be morally deplorable and indefensible. On this, she pulled no punches:

"Just as congress and the courts have recognized the need to protect child labor, the [right of] workers to organize for the purposes of collective bargaining and to picket to enforce their contracts with management, as well as the unfair treatment if women workers, so too by the act of the courts or by congressional act must the right to work in the post-war world be guaranteed every able-bodied man and woman in America, regardless of his race or religious belief."

What's more, she called for "a guaranteed minimum annual wage that is based upon the relation of a fair standard of living to the cost of living. Her conception of citizenship, then, included both a guaranteed jobs program and a guaranteed annual income. In a decent society, there's an economic floor beneath which no one should be allowed to sink. To allow anyone to so sink is to treat them as less than a full-fledged citizenship.

Alexander also argued that securing the right to employment at livable wages provided a much needed bulwark against the rise of authoritarian politics. Folk without jobs often become fodder for up and coming fascists. Widespread joblessness is fertile ground for all sorts of xenophobia and racism. As Banks notes, Alexander knew that the presence of such evils were much more likely to be nurtured and flourish in the presence of widespread joblessness.

MOVING FORWARD

To heed the voice of Sadie T.M. Alexander is to refuse to long for a return to "normal." To heed her voice is to refuse to find a certain level of involuntary unemployment that we're able to tolerate and make peace with. To hear her voice is to adamantly refuse to embrace public policies that are willing to sacrifice our siblings at the altar of price stability. To heed the voice of Sadie T.M. Alexander is to envision and enact an economics that is guided by the beacon of human rights, including the right to a job at a livable wage.

Banks reminds us that Sadie T.M. Alexander is not just the first African-American economist. She is the first economist--period-- to advance an argument in favor of a guaranteed right to employment at livable wages. She was first.

Before A. Phillip Randolph’s Freedom Budget

Before King's call for an economic bill of rights

Before the Civil Rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

Before the full employment plank in the Black Panther Party's Ten Point Program

Before the endorsement and advocacy of genuine full employment by Black Lives Matter

Before the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act

Before Hyman P. Minsky, the economist most often associated with the idea of a guaranteed public jobs program

Before Rep. Ayanna Pressley's recently introduced resolution calling for a federally funded guaranteed jobs program

She was before all of this, and much more. As is far too often the case, though, the labor of Black women often go unrecognized. Nina Bank's, then, foregrounds the contribution of yet another Black woman who has not received the props due her. She died in 1989, and those of us about the work of economic and racial justice can best honor her by calling her name every time we discuss a way out of the wilderness of involuntary justice.

Sadie T.M. Alexander

First African-American economist

First economist to issue a cogent call for a guaranteed jobs program

Advocate for economic rights

Ancestor urging us to do and be better

Thanks to Dr. Nina Banks, we're on notice to call her name, and to put some much deserved respect on it.

Catch you on the flip side,

Doc Greene