Politics & Power Quote by Donna Shalala

A line like this is policy talk dressed up as a moral alarm bell. Shalala’s phrasing carefully sidesteps the usual fiscal scolding - “not because of money” - and swaps in something harder to quantify and harder to argue against: “our social fabric.” That move is strategic. Budgets can be debated and reforecast; social cohesion is framed as fragile, almost sacred, and therefore urgent. She’s not just arguing for employment programs. She’s arguing for work as a civic glue.

The subtext is that unemployment isn’t merely an individual setback; it’s a contagious condition that frays trust, heightens resentment, and destabilizes communities. “Large numbers of people who are not working” quietly broadens the target beyond the temporarily jobless to anyone perceived as detached from the labor force - a phrase that can sweep in the underemployed, the disabled, caregivers, or people pushed out by deindustrialization. Its ambiguity is useful: it rallies a wide audience while leaving room to define “not working” politically later.

Context matters because Shalala’s career sits at the intersection of welfare reform-era thinking and technocratic governance: employment as dignity, but also as discipline. The intent is twofold: justify government intervention (training, childcare, health coverage) while reaffirming a mainstream American ethic that equates work with belonging. It’s compassionate in its diagnosis - isolation corrodes communities - and coercive in its implied remedy: participation in the labor market isn’t just economics; it’s membership.