Moving From Welfare to the White House

WASHINGTON — It was back in May, after more than half a year on welfare, that Laura Askew heard from a Virginia job counselor about an opening across the Potomac River--in the Executive Office of the President.

“She said, ‘They have a mail room position in the White House. Would you be interested?’ ” a smiling Askew, 29, recalled. “And my words were, ‘Yeah, right.’ ”

But it was no joke: Askew’s odyssey from welfare to the White House was about to begin. President Clinton had announced the month before that the federal government would be hiring 10,000 welfare beneficiaries as part of the push to move such recipients into jobs, a much-debated national experiment in human behavior and the economy.

And in a remarkable turn of fortune, the White House job posting found its way to the northern Virginia training center where Askew, a soft-spoken single mother, was polishing new office skills five days a week while collecting her welfare check.

The job counselor encouraged her to apply. “She said, ‘Let’s give it a try. You never know.’ ”

Askew, who had never even seen the White House up close, decided to follow the advice. But the jittery emotions felt by the North Carolina native may parallel what lies in store for many welfare recipients across the country, as new work requirements kick in and they are forced into the labor market in the coming years.

“I was a little afraid, because I had to catch the bus and the subway to go to work,” she said.

She had never taken the subway. So she practiced the short commute into Washington twice before the interview, “just to get the feel of it.”

Economists say possibly 1 million jobs will be needed to employ former welfare beneficiaries by 2000, a potentially disruptive flood of job seekers at the bottom of the income ladder competing for entry-level positions. Of course, most won’t be knocking on the president’s door. Others coming off welfare will need to find their niche in private firms around the country.

For its part, the Clinton administration has hired six former welfare beneficiaries, quietly placing them in entry-level jobs within the White House complex of four main buildings. Askew ended up in the basement of the New Executive Office Building, kitty corner from the White House.

Even as the administration has sought to set an example for the private sector, officials acknowledge dealing with the same type of concerns other employers likely will have about how the new workers would perform.

Some feared the newcomers would “come in here with little motivation. That you’d have to call them up to get to work on time,” said Ada Posey, an administrator inside the Executive Office of the President.

But Posey is quick to add that a happier reality “shattered” any preconceptions, and she describes Askew as a star employee. “We might get a call from anywhere in the White House complex that says we need to get this letter to the staff secretary in five minutes. Laura would not flinch. She would probably get it over there in two minutes.”

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Askew is not unfamiliar with the world of work. After graduating from high school in Windsor, N.C., she went on to get training in electronics and worked for eight years in a plant that made computer chips. There were repeated layoffs, however, and last year she decided to move with her 1-year-old son to Arlington, Va., a Washington suburb, where her sister offered a place to stay.

“It was hard,” Askew said during a break from her job sorting and delivering mail. “Especially having a son and knowing I’m not moving alone.”

She started a job search, but her nest egg--”$200 to $300”--was running out. Meanwhile, no job was forthcoming. “Once you call them and they ask your qualifications and you give it to them, they say we’re looking for someone with a little more experience.”

Last fall, Askew signed up for welfare. She also began participating in the training program to provide office skills, such as using software programs and typing.

As she began her new job with the White House staff, she had one source of butterflies that few other new employees ever experience: She was nervous about bumping into the president. That occurred shortly after she started, when Askew was among a group of employees brought to the Executive Mansion’s South Lawn to watch Clinton departing on a helicopter excursion. The president said, “Nice to meet you,” she recalled.

Nowadays, she can look forward to a more comfortable future. Although she declined to reveal her salary, Askew’s path could lead to supervisory wages exceeding $40,000 annually if all continues to go well.

In making the shift from welfare to work, Askew is part of a much larger trend. Since Clinton took office in 1993, the nation’s welfare rolls have declined by more than 2.8 million people, according to the administration, reflecting both a grass-roots effort by some states to require beneficiaries to find work and a buoyant pace of job creation.

About 425 companies have joined a “Welfare to Work Partnership” intended to promote the hiring of welfare recipients in response to Clinton’s repeated appeals for help from the private sector following passage of the welfare reform legislation that imposes the work requirements nationwide.

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But it is not yet known whether the private sector will provide sufficient opportunity for these newest participants in the labor market. Many economists and advocates of the poor worry that there won’t be enough suitable jobs to go around for those who need them when their welfare runs out.

Problems with transportation, basic skills, unstable families and even such workplace expectations as punctuality are potential obstacles for others who desire making the leap to stable employment and financial self-sufficiency.

“You’re just adding more competition at the lower end of the wage scale,” said Daniel J.B. Mitchell, a labor economist at UCLA. “And these are the people who already are, in some sense, at the end of the queue.”

So it is too early to say whether Askew’s odyssey from welfare to the White House is a metaphor for the happy times awaiting others or more akin to hitting the lottery.

Not that she has any doubts about the change in her life. When asked her feelings on the matter, Askew replies firmly, with one word: “Blessed.”