Posts Tagged ‘2009 unemployment’

Obama Jobs Summit – Real Results or More Smoke & Mirrors

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

With trillion dollar deficits and national unemployment in excess of 10% (before factoring in employees forced into part-time positions and those terminally unemployed), President Obama is under significant pressure to create the jobs he promised during the campaign.

Interestingly the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was not invited to the Summit – even though the Chamber represents over 3,000,000 businesses throughout the U.S.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/02/obama-policy-critics-not-invited-to-jobs-summit/

http://www.ajc.com/news/atlantans-others-head-to-222929.html

While various corporate tax incentives, including hiring credits are being considered as part of the Summit, there are already a myriad of federal and state tax incentives which provide annual hiring credits ranging from $500 to $15,000 per “qualified” employee hired.  Many of these programs are Location-Based Incentive Credits (LBICs), requiring the business to be located in specific economically disadvantaged regions (over 8,000).  In addition there are a number of programs which can generate hiring credits regardless of the business location.

Hopefully the Administration will explore and add additional hiring credits.   Congress and the states should also invest funds to improve the marketing and education of the existing federal and state hiring credit programs to make sure employers understand that they can dramatically reduce their labor costs on new hires – as well as some employees hired in prior years.  Read more about these valuable incentives @: www.blakechristian.com

 

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich held his own “Real” Jobs Summit today to highlight his proposed fixes.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125980635501974009.html

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34637

 

Republican Congressman Boehner’s job creation/ retention letter to the President can be found at:

http://www.employernation.org/letter.aspx?utm_source=whereoware&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=OpenLetter-Prosp-Dec09

 

Federal Stimulus Spending – Real Job Creation or Government Smoke & Mirrors?

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Last week the Administration announced their revised figure for jobs “created” and “saved” as a result of the $787 billion federal stimulus package approved earlier this year.

As reflected in the New York Times article linked below, over half of the 640,000 saved or created jobs cited by the government have been in the education sector.   Only 80,000 jobs are tied to construction – which was originally the centerpiece of the stimulus package – but that portion of the spending was ultimately whittled down to only about 15% of the total package – so the job output is in that same range.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/us/31stimulus.html

 

The ongoing controversy is how the government is defining and measuring  “saved” and “created” jobs.  From the point in time that the Administration promised that the stimulus plan would save or create 3 million jobs, taxpayers and economists have asked for details as to how this will be measured.  For now it is a moving target with vague explanations.

California, New York and Washington had the highest number of jobs created or saved.  For additional details regarding the state-by-state and sector-by-sector job results thus far, check out the government website below:

http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx

 

On Monday November 2nd, President Obama attempted to temper the expectations regarding job growth by stating that job losses will continue for the next weeks and months and pressed the public and private sectors to become more creative to increase hiring.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Obama-Private-public-sectors-apf-1954366305.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=5&asset=&ccode=

Stay tuned……