Federal stimulus dollars for fighting unemployment in Perry County are set to expire at the end of September. After that, state officials aren’t yet sure how many of the program’s 400 workers will be able to hold on to their jobs.
Perry County is some ninety miles southwest of Nashville. Unemployment there peaked at almost 30 percent a year and a half ago, and is now down around half that.
Jan McKeel heads the region’s career center. She says the longer people are unemployed, the harder a time they have finding new jobs. And she says people in the program have been glad to have the work, at least while it lasted.
“Folks wanted to work, and they were in a crisis mode and I literally think this program saved that community. Now on the other hand, programs like this will not work everywhere.”
McKeel says Perry County’s rural nature helped the program succeed.
Critics have argued creating temporary jobs with stimulus money just pushes off the unemployment problem instead of fixing it. But Governor Phil Bredesen argues people in places like Perry County can’t afford to wait on the economy to improve, because they have bills to pay, and are hurting now.
“You’ve got people who don’t have a job and they’ve got a mortgage payment due at the end of this month and they’ve got a car payment sometime and they need a job. So let’s first of all step in kind-of WPA-like and see if we can’t get them a job.”
Bredesen says if the economy recovers enough to make those jobs last, so much the better.
“I can’t and no one should guarantee somebody a lifetime job in this, but boy helping to bridge some people through this you know can be of tremendous help.”
Earlier this week Bredesen said if he’d had more freedom in choosing where to spend federal stimulus dollars, he would’ve done more similar projects.
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