When Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, about 18 million Americans were in immediate need of food, clothing, medical care, and most of all, jobs. For his administration, the notion of a “jobless recovery” would have been an anathema. Indeed, for FDR, the health of the nation was tied directly to the dignity of work. People needed jobs not merely to put food on the table but also to maintain their physical, psychological, and economic well-being. Moreover, FDR firmly believed that it was government’s responsibility to provide for the “general welfare.” So in the midst of an economic crisis that had produced the highest unemployment figures in our nation’s history, he did not hesitate to use the power of the state to provide the jobs the private sector had failed to generate. The Civilian Conservation Corps, which put hundreds of thousands of young men to work regenerating our nation’s depleted forests, preventing soil erosion, and enhancing our national parks; the Civil Works Administration, which provided work for more than 4 million Americans building schools, roads, and bridges, or as teachers in rural districts; the Works Progress Administration, which between 1935 and 1938 employed 5 million people to help build the economic infrastructure we still enjoy today.

These programs were not government hand-outs. Far from it. They provided real jobs to real people doing real work. They improved our natural resources and quality of life and brought America’s economic infrastructure into the modern world. No one -- least of all FDR -- expected these programs to continue indefinitely.

But they dramatically reduced unemployment in a moment of crisis and prevented what FDR called the “atrophy” of the work force. They also brought hope and dignity to millions through the one thing most able-bodied Americans want more than anything else-a job. Isn’t it time we adopted the same approach to our own recovery from the Great Recession?