Not that there aren't admirable efforts underway—including many grassroots ventures seeking to harness a massive economic transition. And the Recovery Act directs some job-development funds toward people in poverty.

But, as Yee points out, without a clear racial-equity component built in, the plan won't fundamentally address the needs of communities facing high barriers to employment and structural discrimination. These aren't the folks Reagan saw as needing “readjustment"; they're the ones whose needs typically don't even figure into the mainstream political calculus.

A study by the Chicago Fed found that workforce programs focus on more established blue-collar workers displaced by structural changes, even though the hardest hit are often the less-skilled, low-wage earners at the margins of the economy. Some groups, such as immigrants and people with criminal convictions, are triple-burdened by social biases, employment barriers and limited social resources.

In a working paper for the National Black Latino Summit, Manuel Pastor of the University of Southern California's Program for Environmental and Regional Equity argued:

Latinos and African Americans alike need better and more work. On the one hand, unemployment is an issue, especially for Black men. On the other, working poverty is an issue, especially for Latino immigrants. Both need a better performing education system at all levels—but major investments in adult education are especially important for the advancement of immigrant Latinos. The criminal justice system needs rethinking so that correction does not become destruction; this is extraordinarily critical to African Americans.

Historically, jobs programs have often involved warehousing poor people in dead-end jobs, as welfare-to-work programs tend to do—or training people in skills that employers don't want. Creating jobs isn't just "making work"; in the long run, it's about making work pay.

Image: Oakland Green Jobs Corps Graduation (Ella Baker Center)