Invisible Jobs and Shadow Unemployment
Following the Obama Administration’s proclamation that jobs are being created is like being a Ghost Buster – we are chasing invisible jobs! If there are 640,000 new jobs created under the stimulus package, as the Obama Administration contends, then they must be in the witness protection program. The latest labor figures from The Wall Street Journal suggest that if we factor in December’s loss of 85,000 jobs, then between December 2007 (when the recession began) and December 2009, there were 7.2 million fewer jobs.
The paper further reports “A broader measure of unemployment, including those who have quit job hunting as well as those working part time because they cannot find full-time work, remained about the same at 17.3 percent in December from 17.2 percent in November.” In addition there are those that have taken jobs well beneath their education and skill level just to have some sort of income while awaiting better times. It is simply beyond comprehension that the U.S. would have shadow unemployment figures that rivals that of developing nations.
How can the Administration make their job claims? Some call it ObaMath. In a recent column, Newsweek’s George Will described the phony math behind the job creation claims. “Having used stimulus money to give raises to its 317 employees, Head Start in Augusta, Ga. reported 317 jobs created. A Georgia nonprofit multiplied the percentage of raises (1.84) it gave to employees receiving them (508) and reported the stimulus had saved 935 jobs.” That’s ObaMath.
If you follow ObaMath to its ultimate conclusion and believe that the Administration has saved 640,000 jobs through the billions it has already spent on the stimulus package, U.S. taxpayers paid $260,000.00 per job, paying a salary of $59,000 per job.
In fact, ObaMath is so suspect, that the White House no longer uses the word “stimulus”– Obama has not used the word since October, 2009. The lingo being communicated by White House staffers is: “targeted actions”, designed to try and distance its job claims from the jobs creation program.
Now, according to press reports, the White House has abandoned its controversial method of counting jobs under President Obama’s economic “stimulus”, making it impossible to track the number of jobs saved or created with the $787 billion in recovery money. The report notes: “Despite mounting a vigorous defense of its earlier count of more than 640,000 jobs credited to the stimulus, even after numerous errors were identified, the Obama Administration now is making it easier to give the stimulus credit for hiring. It is no longer about counting a job as saved or created; now it’s a matter of counting jobs funded by the stimulus. That means that any stimulus money used to cover payroll will be included in the jobs credited to the program, including pay raises and pay for people who never were in jeopardy of losing their positions.”
So how can the Administration make good on their claims of generating new jobs? The answer is readily apparent: give small business the resources they need to succeed. Since small businesses create more than seventy percent of all new jobs, it is hard to understand why the stimulus package provides almost nothing for small businesses and entrepreneurs – the part of the economy that has historically lead the nation out of our economic downturns.
The recovery starts by taking off the yoke of high taxes that discourages small business owners from hiring. The fewer resources they have, the less they have to spend on new jobs.
Conduct a reality check on the new healthcare plan. Do you actually know what’s in the plan? Well, nobody else does either, and that includes small business owners. Without knowing what kind of new burden they face on healthcare costs, they cannot determine if they can retain current employees, let alone consider adding new jobs.
The bottom line is that uncertainty is bad for business. Someone has to take a stance on job creation. If it is not the government, then it’s all of us. Visit Truth for America and learn how you can contact your local, state and federal representatives. Demand to know why they are not doing more for job creation. “Ghost Busters” was a funny movie but there’s nothing funny about looking for invisible jobs that don’t exist.