“The proposed ‘shovel ready’ jobs stimulus package does too little, too late for those of us who shovel information and business processes,” according to Trude Diamond, United Professionals (UP) board member. “What are we supposed to do? Wait until the road builders and bridge constructors start shopping again, and the retailers and service providers can afford to get bank loans to grow, and finally those businesses need white-collar workers and managers again? Wait for the “trickle-up” principle to work? By that time, we’ll be living in our not-yet-repossessed cars, hoping that someone will call our prepaid cell-phone with a job offer. And what’s to keep the businesses from outsourcing the kinds of jobs we do, anyway?”

Of course, the national stimulus plan wisely addresses blue-collar, build-the-infrastructure (which is rotting as we speak) types of jobs. The able-bodied, (mostly) young, (mostly) men who do those jobs are precisely the demographic that every nation’s leadership knows are most likely to join the rebel guerillas in the jungles—or city alleys and underground tunnels—if you don’t keep them productively busy.

But, as wise as the plan is to get “the young and the restless” back to work, it would be equally foolish to leave the unemployed educated professionals to their own and increasingly angry devices. Never mind the possibility of engineers hacking the power grid and Internet servers. It’s just bad for the nation to not employ its brain-trust. We can contribute significant, workable concepts and processes that will achieve corporate and public goals. When we have money, we educate our children to ensure the next generation of American leadership — rather than sending them off to work to help pay the mortgage now that Mom and Dad are receiving unemployment compensation and food stamps. The government can create information-worker and manager jobs, too. Schools need more teachers. Federal, state and local government offices need more competent communicators working in all their offices. Think of how effective we’d be as watchdogs over the ethics of elected officials or as agents of the SEC; recent events have demonstrated how many more of those we could use.

On the private-sector side, the business bailouts must demand job-creation—re-creation, really. Corporate bailout money should come with strict rules about bringing off-shored call center and software development jobs back home as a condition of receiving the stimulus funds. Now. Not over 12 or 18 months. Now. “Flash cut,” as we say about certain business system change-overs. You know … with the same speed we U.S. workers experienced when we were laid off from those jobs in the first place. “Here’s your pink slip and check for two weeks’ pay; the security officer will accompany back to your desk to clean it out.” That kind of NOW.

Stimulus by the Numbers: Too Little, Too Late for the Middle Class

United Professionals has found that, though the total cost of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 is reported to be $789 billion, only about $180 billion is direct spending for job creation, of which less than $30 billion will be spent in 2009. (Most of the $100 billion to be spent in 2009 is for aid and tax cuts.)

“In the entire bill, about $33 billion is directly targeted to white collar jobs,” says UP member Tom Bishop, “which includes $19 billion in Health IT to be spent from 2010 through 2016, and that is too little, too late for the middle class, which is reeling from rounds of lay-offs and years of downsizing and off-shoring.” Bishop notes that the rest is largely for science, defense, and energy research. One unknown is the $39 billion in aid to states for education programs, because states will apply this money differently according to their immediate needs.

The stimulus bill just signed by President Obama is a good start that we hope will put the brakes on this economic collapse. But it falls far short of sustaining and rebuilding America’s middle class, which has been so badly shattered before and during this recession.

“We urge people to visit UP at www.unitedprofessionals.org, read others’opinions and post comments on this critically important topic,” states UP board chair Bill Holland. “UP plans to initiate local discussion groups and connectivity to local news media outlets in the near future.”