Real Unemployment 17.5%

President Obama announced this morning he will host a jobs summit next month at the White House, a political response to the reality that 1 in 6 workers were un- or under-employed in October. The news comes alongside an article in the NY Times this morning on the emotional and psychological toll - with potential lifelong impacts - widespread unemployment is having on American households - especially on children.

Pundits explain that summits like these are mostly signals to the public that elected leaders are prioritizing the issue - in this case, alarming unemployment.  There's some indication that Democrats are considering a jobs bill, according to The Hill. But I wonder, even though this might be a great, needed government intervention, how much more can the impatient American public take?

I overhear conversations all the time that the stimulus isn't working, where are the results already? It's both true and untrue - stimulus results will show up over time, but it also was an anemic bill compared to what was needed.  How much can we feasibly expect from Congress to produce an effective job creation bill?  I think workforce development programs are notoriously hard to succeed - they're typically very expensive and too small scale, as we're unwilling to tolerate the needed, longer-term investments in education/training and support services that are really essential to keeping people in jobs.  And it's hard to spur job creation at companies when they're already wringing such high productivity out of their existing employees.

So we'll see, but look, the Democrats are paying attention!  President Obama spent 3 whole minutes on our jobless "recovery" before heading off to Asia for a week! No doubt at least one in six Americans were home to watch his remarks live on video.