Jobs, Jobs & More Jobs

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Sat, Sep 04, 2010

With the jobs report out yesterday, it’s better than good news on the for-profits side of the picture. Really stellar results, and should supply enough fodder for the Marketing King sitting in the Oval Office to move through the mid-term elections without doing too much (more) damage to the Democrats.

But this is too important a result to waste on the failed politics of the Pelosi-Obama camp. What is far more important to everyone, employed or not, is that it gives us hope, and the emotional grease tor push through the balance of the year with increased optimism.

For a while, these results crush the discussions from The Double Dip Bear that has been rummaging through the garbage from the dog days of August.

It provides some glimmer of hope for the unemployed that companies are hiring again, and “If those people got jobs, then so can I”. Quite frankly, I believe that without this bump, we would see a much more dramatic fall off in September.

It provides the small business owner-the true economic stimulus for this country-the hope that the balance of the year will yield slightly increased sales.

Nothing wrong with a little hope since most forecasting is typically merely a reflection of stats and how we “feel” about things.

Having said all of this, what we need to do now is to be able to move past survival, get to some level of safe harbor called stability and then push ahead to renewed growth, and that’s going to still take substantive change. When I think about the small business owner, that level of change can only be realized through tax cuts and capital equipment incentives. Having said that, I don’t believe that the current adminstration has the fortitude to fight that political battle.  Certainly not now.

In the meantime, we can’t forget that the overhang of the deficit is now measured in trillions; that it will take millions of more jobs just to get to 8% unemployment, and that the lackluster GDP is still hovering around 1.8% to 2.0%.

But right now, this paticular morning, 24 hours after these results, I, and a lot of other business managers, have a lot more hope about the balance of the year.  

Jack Derby
jack@derbymanagement.com

Tags: the economy, small business management, economic stimulus