About 54,000 more U.S. jobs disappeared in August, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Labor. That means unemployment, which was already at a horrible 9.5 percent, rose in August to an even worse 9.6 percent.
Tens of thousands of the jobs that disappeared last month were temporary Census Bureau jobs that will not be coming around again for another decade.
Some private-sector employers are hiring, but not in nearly high enough numbers to begin to push down the unemployment rate. Nearly 15 million Americans are now officially counted as unemployed.
That is extremely painful to those who do not have jobs, and it is alarming even to those of us who are fortunate enough to be employed. But saying 15 million Americans "officially" are jobless does not tell the whole story of unemployment in America.
An additional 9 million workers want full-time jobs but can't get more than part-time. Adding them to the millions who are not "counted" as unemployed because they have given up the search for jobs, the combined "unemployment" and "underemployment" rate was up from 16.5 percent in July to a shocking 16.7 percent in August. And many economists do not expect any real jobs relief for a long time to come.
Yet what is President Barack Obama's "solution"? He wants to spend tens of billions more tax dollars in "stimulus" funding on make-work construction jobs that will increase our national debt - a debt that is already around $13.4 trillion.
But we already have tried that kind of "stimulus," with $862 billion that Democrats in Congress earlier passed. And it failed to hold down unemployment the way the president said it would. Why would even the slightest consideration be given to throwing more good money after bad?
What is urgently needed from Washington is not a commitment to "do" this or that with some big new program but to "stop doing" so many things that don't work. Congress needs to abandon outright all talk of raising taxes at the end of this year, for instance.
The economic uncertainty that Washington is creating by threatening tax hikes and even more unproductive government spending is stifling free-market investment. Businesses are afraid to risk investing and expanding when they do not know what the economic "rules of the game" are going to be. The same uncertainty has gripped consumers, who are afraid to spend because they simply do not have a clear idea where the president and Democrats in Congress are taking our economy. The lack of consumer spending is driving down demand for goods and services, killing off still more jobs.
It should be evident by now that the combination of big government spending and threats of higher taxes is not a formula for economic recovery but for continued recession. We need less government waste - and more free enterprise.