Unemployment Report, Real Solutions

CEI's Berlau, Yeatman Offer Plan for Job Growth

Washington, D.C., Oct. 2, 2009—Today’s unemployment report showed the U.S. jobless rate reaching 9.8 percent, the highest since 1983. And although unemployment is referred to as a “lagging indicator” when coming out of recession—many employers don’t start rehiring until they see other signs of growth—employers still cut far more jobs in September than expected.

Competitive Enterprise Institute scholars John Berlau and William Yeatman wrote this week about policies that work and don’t work in fueling job creation. They argue that spending and regulation, whatever other merits they may have, have not been shown to create “net new jobs” and often result in “net job loss.”

Berlau and Yeatman argue that the real pro-employment growth policies are tax and regulatory changes that remove government barriers to job creation. They point to solutions such as streamlining the licensing of nuclear power plants, and reducing the burden of the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting mandates — the latter having greatly raised the costs of capital for smaller companies trying to go public and, as shown by University of Pittsburgh economists, hit innovative tech firms especially hard.

> Read the Washington Times op-ed, “Solutions: How to Reduce Unemployment”