The Mayor s public goal was to end welfare dependence, and push recipients off the rolls into jobs.
Statistics are equally poor when government agencies are the work sites.
The New York Times largely concurs. In a series of articles published the week of April 20, the Times quoted a study indicating that less than a third of New York welfare recipients leaving the rolls were actually in jobs. These numbers support anecdotal evidence that students on welfare who are pushed into workfare lose out, especially in New York City where the unemployment rate is double that of the rest of the nation. Melinda Lackey, director of the Welfare Rights Initiative at Hunter College, points to a better solution to ending reliance on welfare. She contends that over eighty percent of those students on welfare who go on to receive post-secondary degrees get off of welfare permanently.