The Black & White of It All -Unemployment Crisis

Last week the unemployment report stated that the unemployment rate reached 9.5%, totaling 12.5 million people out of work. It was with interest I waited to hear the President address the problem hopefully to provide direction to resolve the crisis. What I, what we all heard was support for the House Energy Bill as a long term solution to unemployment.

Disappointment would be a mild reaction to this approach. Some feel the stimulus bill is a salvation of the problem. Unfortunately neither will solve this problem quickly, adequately. The way the money is being used it may never contribute to a solution.

It is further amazing that none of our leaders in either party has reach to the one segment of our economy that could help fix the problem with a solid base, not wishful thinking, and do so quickly.

Based on 2004 census data there are 5,197,440 small business owners in the US employing from 1 - 99 employees, totals 41,837,901 employees. The following are current unemployment facts:

Since we usually carry a 4% unemployment rate the current total is 5.5% over our norm.

This brings the potential of people to enter the workforce at 7,236,842 million.

Current small business employee count is 8 employees on average.

Placing unemployed in the small business workforce would add 1.3 employees to each small business operation.

Cost would be $180,921,050,000 at $25,000 per, Stimulus Package is $787,000,000,000.

Stimulus would still have $606,078,950,000 to spend how they wish and do with it what they do now, whatever that is. What they would not have to do is waste money on unemployment's payments.

There are multiple benefits to providing a job to the unemployed for their own pride and confidence then to the economy. Today we give people money and they save it or pay debt, they do not stimulate the economy due to fear of the future.

Provide them a job and confidence returns that there really is a future and it becomes easier to spend some of their money. We then actually do stimulate the economy at a very low cost compared to the current program.

There are obvious criteria, rules and how to's for such an approach but surely some smart people in our government can develop such. Assuming there are smart people in government desiring to fix a problem instead of benefiting from it.

More on the Black & White of this subject later.

T. C. Simon