US / A Jobs Agenda for the Right

Conservatives should see that there is a role for macroeconomic stimulus in getting the labor market back on its feet. Some limited, targeted, and independently beneficial federal spending can help increase long-term growth and mobility. And monetary policy with its eye on enabling growth can make a big difference.

While such efforts can help establish a foundation of circumstances conducive to growth, they by no means constitute the limits of the government\’s power to help get Americans back to work. Beyond helping to create a macroeconomic environment that encourages job growth, a conservative jobs agenda should seek to advance policies designed to support employment, remove structural obstacles to job growth, and increase the dynamism and energy of the labor market. In some cases, government needs to get out of the way. But in others, conservatives should embrace energetic but prudent government action.

SUPPORTING EMPLOYMENT

A conservative jobs agenda could begin by pursuing a series of relatively familiar goals that need to be re-emphasized.

To start, rolling back oppressive licensing requirements would be a big help. The Institute for Justice reports that the average cosmetologist spends 372 days in training to receive an occupational license from the government, while the average emergency medical technician trains for 33 days. Which occupation seems like it needs more training? In October 2013 the Washington Post told the story of Isis Brantley, who is required by law to complete a staggering 2,250 hours of training in order to teach hair-braiding to willing customers in Dallas. The government certainly has a role in ensuring that certain occupations are practiced only by well-trained professionals, but it seems obvious that we have gone too far. As part of their effort to put Americans back to work, conservatives should support scaling back unnecessary occupational licensing at every level of government in order to advance economic liberty and create jobs.

A reform of today’s disability-benefit system is also essential. The share of working-age adults receiving Social Security Disability Insurance benefits doubled from 2.3% in 1989 to 4.6% in 2009. Program expenditures have increased dramatically as well. SSDI applications track movements in the unemployment rate across time, providing strong support to the hypothesis that many people who would like to work but can’t find a job end up on disability. The United States must ensure a basic standard of living for the truly disabled, but no one seriously disputes the argument that SSDI needs to be reformed so that it ceases to offer a permanent alternative to working for people would could be in the labor force. Conservatives should champion this cause unabashedly.

The way we currently treat highly skilled immigrants needs to be rethought too: We bring motivated, ambitious foreigners into the United States to earn graduate degrees, and then we send them out of the country after they’ve graduated, often against their wishes, just when they are at the point when they could contribute to the economy and create jobs. Any immigrant who earns a graduate degree in America in the physical sciences, engineering, high technology, or mathematics should be granted permanent residency. Highly skilled immigrants are job creators; one in four engineering and tech businesses founded between 1995 and 2005 had at least one immigrant founder. Reforming our immigration laws to admit more highly skilled immigrants is a great jobs program, and should be marketed and thought of as such.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 

via A Jobs Agenda for the Right > Publications > National Affairs.