If you are working on jobs creation, this is a must read assessment that says the jobs outlook is bleak.Below I highlight Reich's points that really got my attention. I think "jobs in the hood advocates" must be more innovative, collaborative and politically involved than ever before. Strategies I recommend include developing social enterprises and relationships with key regional industries and companies that are facing critical skills shortages ; building collaborations/cooperatives to compete for government contracts and to get corporations to outsource locally rather than abroad; and working with small businesses to create more jobs. Advocacy-wise we must keep pressing for government spending and creation of more incentives that promote job creation.
"The most painful political truth for Democrats is the nation won’t possibly be out of this jobs hole by the presidential election of 2012, even if the recovery is vigorous... In order to get out of the hole, we’d need an average monthly increase of 400,000 jobs between now and then. But even at the peak of the 1990s jobs boom, the highest we ever got was 280,000 jobs a month...Almost 40 percent of the jobless have been without work for over six months. That’s a record. People who have been out of the labor force for more than six months have a particularly hard time getting back in. Many never do...Big American companies are more profitable...But there’s a massive disconnect between profitability and employment. Companies are increasing profits by cutting their costs (including payrolls), outsourcing more jobs abroad, and selling more abroad. But American workers — and, therefore, American consumers — are still stuck in a deep recession.
Only two things are keeping unemployment from rising more: The stimulus package, which is approaching its peak spending; and the Fed, which continues to keep a loose rein on the money supply and buy up mortgage-backed securities...More spending in the short term is the only way to accelerate a jobs recovery... more deficit spending is a good thing to do now, but a bad thing three or four or five years from now when the economy is back to normal. (I should admit at this point that I don’t think we’ll ever get back to “normal” because I believe “normal” got us into the pickle we’re now in, but I’ll save this for another time.) Yet Republicans will demagogue the deficit and debt like mad in coming months.
I hope the President doesn’t ... begin talking about deficits and debts, when he should be talking only about creating more jobs. How issues are framed for the public makes all the difference."
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