Why the "Jobs Bill" Won't Creat Jobs

The NYT article on the jobs bill passed by the Senate yesterday included the views of economists Timothy Bartik and John Bishop as to why the bill will likely create few jobs. It would have been helpful to include the fact that the private sector adds roughly 4 million jobs a month, most of which are replacing jobs lost due to either workers quitting or being laid off. The jobs bill would allow firms to take the credit for any of the workers that they would have hired anyhow, as long as the workers has been employed less than 40 hours in the last sixty days. Since the credit provided in the bill is relatively small (6.2 percent of wages for the rest of 2010 and $1,000 if the worker stays on the payroll for 1 year), the vast majority of workers for whom the credit is claimed almost certainly would have been hired even without the credit. In other words, it is money for nothing.

--Dean Baker