When there’s not enough labor to go around on Labor Day

Labor Day is that end-of-summer holiday that is traditionally marked by fairs, car shows, picnics and one more trip to the amusement park.

But this year it is hard to ignore the ugly reality of a stagnant economy that has left 14 million Americans out of work. More than four in ten of those have been unemployed for more than six months.

This is a wrenching problem for those 14 million men and women. It is a political problem for anyone in Washington. That problem starts at the top, with President Barack Obama, but it has the potential of trickling down to endanger the career of any politician who is seen as indifferent to the plight of the unemployed and to the threat that chronic unemployment represents to the national economy.

On Thursday, Obama will address a joint session of Congress to present a jobs plan and, presumably, call a unified effort toward creating jobs. Those who have complained that the topic doesn’t rise to the level of a national emergency justifying a joint session are obviously not among the 14 million who are out of work, and certainly not among the 6 million who have been without a job for more than six months.

The president is expected to propose a mix of tax credits and public-works spending. He’s already called on Congress to expedite passage of the pending transportation bill, which will keep road construction workers on the job and open up jobs for more. And he surprised everyone and angered some of his most ardent supporters when he abruptly withdrew proposed stiffer clean air rules that Republicans and the business community have insisted would kill jobs.

Can’t do it alone

But whatever Obama says Thursday, he’s going to need to get a job-creation package through the Republican-controlled House and a Senate in which Republicans can easily stall bills through filibustering.

So his program is either going to have to make sense to the Republicans on its merit or make enough sense to the American people that Republicans feel obliged to work with the president.

Almost everyone talks about the need to cut taxes, but tax cuts alone do not create jobs. They must be tailored to increase consumer spending or to encourage companies and upper-bracket taxpayers to reinvest in America.

Employment statistics from eight years under President George W. Bush show all tax cuts do not trickle down in a way that creates jobs. Bush entered office with 132.4 million jobs and left with 133.5, an increase of 1.1 million jobs. But only about 10 percent of those jobs were in the private sector. Nearly a million were state, local and federal government jobs.

But as dismal as the Bush statistics may have been, they shine compared to the first two and a half years of the Obama administration, which saw a drop in jobs from 133.5 million to 131.2 million as of July. Ironically, while Bush enjoyed an increase in government jobs, Obama has seen about a half million local, state and federal jobs disappear this year.

Last month, for instance, there were 17,000 new jobs in the private sector, but there was no net creation of jobs because government employment rolls dropped by 17,000.

The obvious downside of shrinking government is that it reduces jobs, and those government workers not only lose their jobs, they lose the ability to buy the goods and services that create jobs for others in the private sector.

Whether Obama can effectively make that case — and whether enough people in Congress choose to listen — will have a lot to do with the tone of America next Labor Day.

No one is expecting a dramatic turnaround. An economy as large as that of the U.S. does not turn on a dime. But there are 14 million Americans who need something that will give them hope, and another 100 million or so who at least wonder from time to time about what they’ll be doing next Labor Day.