Job Czar for the Jobless
Considering that over 80,000 jobs have been shed for each month of his incumbency, President Bush's announcement that he is creating a new undersecretary of commerce post devoted to job creation is notable for its feebleness. The only detail yet clear is that the post is to be devoted to the "needs of manufacturers," and that is hardly a confidence builder for the 9 million trying to find work plus the millions more who have given up.
The 2.7 million jobs lost in the private sector in less than three years is one of the worst slides in decades. "There are better days ahead," Mr. Bush told union workers on Labor Day, in a choice of language that eerily echoes Herbert Hoover. The nation should not forget the president's earlier insistent prescription: in selling his tax cuts in the Republican Congress, Mr. Bush proclaimed them as just the economic "jobs and growth" package workers needed. But the unemployment problem remains rock-hard in resisting the administration's trickle-down fantasy that cuts for the affluent will generate new jobs for the working class.
The tax cuts have failed to do the trick, and the recovery has so far not been of a size sufficient to create jobs. Ominously, a new study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York says this recession's job losses have been far more structural and permanent than in the past. Now, a new job czar has emerged like the Wizard of Oz to signal that the presidential election cycle is upon us. The agony of the jobless deserves the fullest attention of the president and his eager rivals, and federal action more ambitious than the addition of employment for one happy undersecretary in the Commerce Department.
What do you think of Bush's solution to joblessness?
