Baltimore has thousands of unemployed and under-employed, unskilled and low-skilled workers. These people need jobs, the sooner the better.  It’s an urgent problem of the highest order.

As it turns out, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that there are 48,000 openings for truck drivers across the country.  Quite probably, many hundreds of these jobs are in the greater Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. The pay is good, at a median hourly rate of $20/hour plus benefits, and many employers will pay for training.

All you need to do when you take office is create a task force that identifies these employers and offers them affordable incentives to give the City’s unemployed who are interested in these jobs a chance.

You will also need to come up with creative ways to make sure our unemployed know about these openings and have the means to get to work when they are hired.  Lack of automobile and other transportation to suburban jobs continues to be a major impediment to employment.

Why do you need a task force?  Why not just rely upon existing programs?  Because the city government you’re going to inherit has failed to help serious numbers of these un- and under-employed people find jobs.  It’s time for an entirely new approach to the problem.

Yes, it could be just this simple to put a thousand or two of the City’s unemployed to work pretty much right away.

And then when that task force is done helping all these good people get jobs, they can turn their attention to identifying other areawide shortages for unskilled and low-skilled unemployed workers who your administration can help. A few hundred jobs here, another few hundred there and the next thing you know you’ll be the Mayor that changed the futures of tens of thousands of Baltimore families and neighborhoods for the better – and for generations to come. Not a bad reputation and legacy to have.

By the way, did it ever occur to you to bring agriculture to the two-thirds of the city that’s needs help? Maybe turn all that vacant property where no one wants to live into large urban centers for open and covered agricultural growth, processing and distribution that will employ many more thousands of Baltimoreans? …Let us know if you’re interested.