Special Report

“You can’t tell me that all these jobs are going to drop from the trees,” said one Lowndes County woman. “How am I supposed to work when there ain’t a job I’m qualified for within 30 miles of me?”

Women searching for work instead of welfare can expect a rude awakening in their first few months on the job hunt. With thousands of low-skill jobs leaving Alabama and the rest of the United States every year, some experts fear there may be a larger job-worker gap than the nation has seen since the Depression. In this state alone, 20,000 adults will be looking for work because of the reform.

The first step in Alabama was lowering the exemption age for children and their nonworking mothers. Before Oct. 1, a woman didn’t have to work or be in a work-related activity if she had a child age 3 or younger. That age has been lowered to 2 as Alabama receives the first of what will be $93 million in federal block grants.

“There’s no way there are enough jobs out there for every woman on AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children),” said Mark Greenberg, an analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a Washington, D.C., organization that lobbied against the welfare reform bill President Clinton signed Aug. 22. “And if they get jobs, will they be better off?”

That’s a question welfare critics have been asking for years. Studies have shown that for a woman to match her total welfare and housing benefits with income in Alabama, she’s going to have to make $13,000 annually or $6.25 an hour. For a woman who’s never held a job, has limited training and will be starting at the bottom in almost any business that hires her, that’s a pipe dream, Greenberg said.

The most growth has been in low-paying jobs that start at minimum wage and have no medical benefits, according to 1995 surveys by the U.S. Department of Labor. Many employers, especially the small businesses that are likely to be in areas close to the nation’s welfare clientele, hire workers for fewer than 32 hours a week so they don’t have to give them full-time status or provide any benefits or job protection. By percentage, the next highest sector of job growth was in the highest of the high-tech areas, well out of the reach of welfare mothers.

That climate will make it especially difficult for inexperienced welfare workers to find jobs that can support them, said Kimble Forrister, director of Alabama Arise. The Montgomery-based anti-poverty agency recently conducted a study that predicted unemployment rates in some counties will hit 20 percent when welfare reforms kick in fully. And, with a legislature focused on cutting benefit eligibility instead of creating jobs, the situation in Alabama will get worse before it improves, Forrister said.

“These women think they’re going to make $8 an hour, and that’s just not the case,” said Gayle Hamilton, a JOBS supervisor with the Hale County Department of Human Resources. Her department has teamed with the rest of the county to find work for almost 200 former AFDC recipients.

“It’s hard to find employers who will hire them, and they certainly aren’t going to pay $8 an hour for an entry-level job.”

Like her counterparts in other counties, she’s trying to crank up a job-development plan. Calhoun County is trying to get employment placement and training tied into its new family-services center. The Calhoun County DHR is scouring the area employment sector to find businesses willing to hire welfare mothers. The going has been slow in the Anniston area, but other areas are stepping up their efforts.

Jefferson County recently had 209 women who had been through the state job-training program show up for a fair geared toward matching AFDC recipients with jobs. Twenty-three of 33 invited employers came with job openings that would suit people on public assistance. The women were told to come dressed professionally. They had to arrange their own transportation, as they would if they had jobs, and had to be on time, said Jacqueline White, the DHR supervisor who organized the job fair at the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center. Hospitals, nursing homes, restaurants and temporary agencies were among the businesses looking for workers.