Improvements in the quality of national--and particularly of urban--life will require even greater expenditures than at present on the delivery of crucial services as education, health protection, recreation, waste disposal, and police and fire protection. Simultaneously, the problem of poverty continues to plague millions, even many who are in the labor force. For those who are underemployed, for the 2 million who have given up looking for jobs, and for those unemployed, the rapidly expanding demand for public service workers constitutes an important opportunity for advancement. The expanding need for important public services and the requirements of the disadvantaged for more and better work opportunities may each carry the solution to the other. This is the rationale for a program to stimulate public employment of the disadvantaged. Five reasons why such a program can be expected to improve the economic welfare of the disadvantaged, particularly of the urban residents, are: (1) public service is growing much faster than those private industries that have traditionally absorbed the poor; (2) government jobs pay substantially higher wages than the poor are currently earning; (3) there are important fringe benefits uniquely associated with public service; (4) the location of public work places in the central city means ease of accessibility for the vary large numbers of the disadvantaged residing in the urban core; and, (5) public service has historically served as the entry point into the world of work for many white ethnic groups. (Author/RJ)