In a 2001 New York Times article discussing the costs and benefits of mandatory recycling in New York, the author listed as the first benefit the creation of approximately 1000 private sector jobs

The primary logic behind this statement is that the mandatory recycling will require extra labor force for doing various tasks associated with mandatory recycling, such as collection, transportation, sorting and processing, thereby providing extra private sector jobs. For example, in NYC, extra administrators will be required to oversee the whole recycling program as well as to educate people about the process to deal with their garbage and dozens of different types of waste products. Recycling will also require extra collection crews and trucks.

Just sorting collected recyclable materials sustains, on a per-ton basis, 10 times more jobs than landfilling. However, it is making new products from the old that offers the largest economic pay off. New recycling-based manufacturers employ even more people and at higher wages. Recycling-based paper mills and plastic product manufacturers, for instance, employ 60 times more workers than do landfills. Product reuse also sustains significantly more jobs than disposal options. Computer refurbishing and repair, for example, creates 68 times more jobs than landfills.

Source:
http://www.quaker.org/clq/2003/TQE091-EN-Recycling.html
http://www.grn.com/library/5myths.htm

Thus, we see that recycling will not only help in cleaning up the environmental pollution, but the process itself will lead to increased manpower or labor requirement, thereby providing employment opportunities in the private sector. Thus, even though the costs of recycling are higher, there is certainly a big economic benefit in terms of creation of new jobs.

Recycling creates or expands businesses that collect, process, and broker recovered materials as well as companies that manufacture and distribute products made with recovered materials. Numerous studies have documented the billions of dollars invested and the thousands of jobs created by recycling. A 1995 recycling employment study for the state of North Carolina, for instance, documented that recycling activities support more than 8,800 jobs in the state, most of which are in the private sector. The study also found that recycling was a net job creator--for every 100 jobs created by recycling only an estimated 13 were lost in solid waste collection and disposal and virgin material extraction within the state.