Speed Maui’s Recovery with a New Civilian Conservation Corps

Since the Lahaina fire, the tourism industry on Maui has collapsed. Because about 40% of Maui’s economy is based on tourism, the island has been shoved into an economic tailspin. Claims for unemployment insurance benefits on Maui have risen to more than 30 times what they were before the fire.

While unemployment insurance is very helpful, it is not enough to fully replace the lost income of unemployed Mauians. Many unemployed individuals are not eligible for unemployment insurance benefits, and many of those who are eligible do not apply for it or may not be able to receive it because of difficulties applying for benefits. The typical benefit in Hawaii for those who do receive unemployment insurance is about half their usual wage. For all these reasons, unemployment insurance cannot fill the economic hole caused by the collapse of the tourist industry.

A federal subsidized employment program could help the recovery of Maui’s economy. In response to the Great Depression of the 1930s, the federal government, through the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, helped millions of families survive economic hardship with government-funded jobs. More recently, in response to the Great Recession of the mid-2000s, the federal government created an emergency fund to subsidize the employment of more than one-quarter of a million workers. A subsidized employment program in Maui could put more people back to work and put more dollars in circulation in the local economy.

The damage from the fire means that there is a lot of new work to do, repairing and rebuilding. Subsidized employment can put unemployed Mauians to work doing these jobs. As the Great Depression jobs programs and the subsequent history of subsidized employment initiatives have shown, employment subsidies can be applied to any type of job, whether in the public sector, the nonprofit sector or the for-profit sector. Many of the people directly harmed by the fire are in need of a wide range of social services. Rather than turning to the limited capacity of volunteers to meet the greater need as is happening now, unemployed Mauians could be paid to fill the additional social service roles. Increasing the employment of Mauians in subsidized jobs will help to rejuvenate the local economy.

One key need for Maui and the rest of the Hawaiian Islands is a work initiative to address the danger of non-native grasses. These grasses were a crucial ingredient in the Lahaina fire. Several experts and government agencies had identified non-native grasses as a wildfire threat before the Lahaina fire, but a lack of resources and political will prevented action. A new Civilian Conservation Corps could work on removing non-native grasses and on other aspects of the Maui wildfire prevention plan.

Of course, the need for critical environmental work is not limited to Maui and the other Hawaiian Islands. In other states, more work should be done to prevent forest fires, to prevent flooding, to create cooling parks in urban heat islands, etc. These needs could be addressed by a new Civilian Conservation Corps.

Economists are worried that the unemployment rate in Maui will rise to 10%. The Maui unemployment rate averaged a low 2.8% in the second quarter of this year. The low national average unemployment rate is obscuring the fact that many places have unemployment rates that are significantly above average. For example, Yuma, Ariz.; Port Arthur, Texas; Magoffin County, Ky.; Flint, Mich.; and Coachella, Calif. all had unemployment rates of about 9% — more than twice the national average — in the second quarter of this year. Places such as these could also benefit from a new Works-Progress-Administration-style subsidized employment program. As in Maui, such a subsidized employment program can help revive distressed local economies and improve people’s lives.

Algernon Austin is the director for Race and Economic Justice at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. His primary focus has been on the intersection of race and the economy. Austin was the first director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy where he focused on the labor market condition of America’s workers of color. Austin has a Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University, and he taught sociology as a faculty member at Wesleyan University.