Jobs Analysis

     Friday's release of unemployment figures for November showed an uptick in Alabama to 9%. The national rate rose a bit to 9.8%. And it got me thinking about the whole jobless "recovery".

     The question isn't why companies are not hiring as the economy every so s-l-o-w-l-y recovers, it's why they would have any incentive to hire anyone!

• They've discovered they can make record profits with fewer people.


• There's so much competition for positions that workers are much more docile than in the roaring first decade of the new century.


• And then there's this: If Barack Obama and the Democrats represent more regulation to protect workers at the expense of companies, then why would employers hire more people in 2010? Why help Democrats win election? Better to hold off and collect the extra profit and hire later, if at all, once the Democrats have been tossed to the political gutter.

     I'm not suggesting that there was some kind of a meeting in which Corporate America agreed to stand in the way of an Obama success, but if just half of the top ten private-sector employers in the country held off hiring because they saw it as being to their own advantage...

     With the Republican takeover of the U.S. House, Republican Alabama Congressman Spencer Baccus is being promoted to Chair of the House Financial Services Committee. And what did he tell the Birmingham News about his new job?

 "In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks," he said.

He later clarified his comment to say that regulators should set the parameters in which banks operate but not micromanage them. "Now is the time to get government out of the way so businesses can create jobs and grow the economy," Bachus said.

     Perfect timing?