Who creates jobs?

you really want to see a wealth creator, just look at the grocer, the nurse, the software developer, the accountant, and the civil engineer. They are all creators of wealth. Chances are, you are a wealth creator.

And remember, creating goods and services is just half the story in producing wealth. Right now, businesses are far less worried about a lack of cash than a lack of confidence that consumer demand will pick up in the future. Unless there is consumer demand, there is no production and no wealth at all. No one is going to make a new MP3 player unless people want to buy it and have the money to make purchases. In this sense, consumers are job creators, too.

As Nick Hanauer, founder of Second Avenue Partners, recently told Bloomberg:

“I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.”

In other words, job creation is related to demand. When regular people have spending power, they demand products and services, which leads to more jobs for others to make the things they want.

Paul Krugman: Bain, Barack and Jobs

Romney's claims about job creation are nonsense:

Bain, Barack and Jobs, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: ...Mr. Romney claims that Mr. Obama has been a job destroyer, while he was a job-creating businessman. For example, he told Fox News: “This is a president who lost ... two million jobs...” He went on to declare, of his time at the private equity firm Bain Capital, “I’m very happy in my former life; we helped create over 100,000 new jobs.”

But his claims about the Obama record border on dishonesty, and his claims about his own record are well across that border. Start with the Obama record. It’s true that 1.9 million fewer Americans have jobs now than when Mr. Obama took office. But the president inherited an economy in free fall... So how much of that Obama job loss took place in, say, the first half of 2009?

The answer is: more than all of it. The economy lost 3.1 million jobs between January 2009 and June 2009 and has since gained 1.2 million jobs. ... So Mr. Romney’s claims about the Obama job record ... are deeply misleading. Still, the real fun comes when we look at what Mr. Romney says about himself. Where does that claim of creating 100,000 jobs come from?

Well, Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post got an answer from the Romney campaign. It’s the sum of job gains at three companies that Mr. Romney “helped to start or grow”: Staples, The Sports Authority and Domino’s.

Mr. Kessler immediately pointed out two problems with this tally. It’s “based on current employment figures, not the period when Romney worked at Bain,” and it “does not include job losses from other companies with which Bain Capital was involved.” ... Hey, if pluses count but minuses don’t, everyone who spends a day playing the slot machines comes out way ahead! ...

Mr. Romney’s claims about being a job creator would be nonsense even if he were being honest about the numbers, which he isn’t.

At this point, some readers may ask whether it isn’t equally wrong to say that Mr. Romney destroyed jobs. Yes... The real complaint about Mr. Romney and his colleagues isn’t that they destroyed jobs, but that they destroyed good jobs.

When the dust settled after the companies that Bain restructured were downsized — or, as happened all too often, went bankrupt — total U.S. employment was probably about the same... But the jobs that were lost paid more and had better benefits than the jobs that replaced them. Mr. Romney and those like him didn’t destroy jobs, but they did enrich themselves while helping to destroy the American middle class.

And that reality is, of course, what all the blather and misdirection about job-creating businessmen and job-destroying Democrats is meant to obscure.

The GOP Job Creation Notions for 2011 are Unchanged Since 1928

It's not surprising that nearly every “job creation” tactic thought up by the Republican party is corporate welfare barely even thinly disguised. What is surprising is how many of these ideas have been and may continue to be adopted by Democrats who fear the ideas that would actually work are politically untenable.
The elimination of the Bush era tax cuts would increase govt revenues by $295 billions. These could support an increase in employment of 8.2 millions and lower unemployment to 4.5%.
By executive order the POTUS could influence the Fortune 500 companies to resume their pre-recession levels of employment. Non compliance could be punishable as crimes against humanity.
Industry is sitting on $1.9 trillions of highly liquid assets [mostly treasuries]. Every effort should be made to shift these funds into productive investment.
Budget cuts in the military could raise the $295 billions required for job creation. The drawback is it doesn't reduce the deficit. Nothing is perfect.

Corporations Have No Urgent Need to Create Jobs

Because unemployment is still so high and the recovery still so weak, corporations have plenty of workers and productive capacity to fulfill the tepid demand.

This is the same problem that John Maynard Keynes identified during the Great Depression – an economy with high unemployment can get stuck in a trough where people are fearful of consuming and corporations are fearful of investing. The answer then, and the answer now, is for the government to put the unemployed back to work doing the vital business of the nation, even if it runs up the deficit some more. We could use a vast army of workers to weatherize buildings and to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. These are the potential consumers that could spur corporations to create jobs.  

Les Leopold

AlterNet