[ When they want to wage war or destroy the planet, American
political elites are obsessed with “job creation.” When workers
start accruing a modest amount of power, elites demand increased
unemployment.]
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THE LIE AT THE HEART OF POLITICIANS’ “JOB CREATION”  
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Sarah Lazare
January 10, 2023
Jacobin
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_ When they want to wage war or destroy the planet, American
political elites are obsessed with “job creation.” When workers
start accruing a modest amount of power, elites demand increased
unemployment. _

A worker on the job suspended beneath an oil rig., (Archer7319 /
Wikimedia Commons)

 

During this time of relatively tight labor market conditions and
soaring prices (or “inflation” as it’s simplistically
[[link removed]] referred
to), something remarkable is happening. Pundits, executives, and even
a few politicians are openly saying that we need to make more people
unemployed — that a lack of joblessness is a problem that must be
rectified.

Lawrence Summers, the former chief economist of the World Bank who has
served in roles in the Clinton and Obama administrations and has the
ear
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Biden’s White House, made this point
[[link removed]] on
January 6. Interviewed against a background of what appears to be a
luxurious tropical setting, he praises the Federal Reserve for drawing
closer to his viewpoint. “They explicitly recognize that there’s
going to need to be increases in unemployment to contain inflation,”
he says, referring to the Federal Reserve’s efforts to spur a
recession
[[link removed]] and
increase unemployment by raising interest rates.

One of the most brazen remarks came on December 22, when Jackie
Cavanaugh, portfolio manager for Putnam Investments, went on
[[link removed]] CNBC’s _Squawk
Box_ to argue that increased job and financial security for regular
people will create a “slog” for the economy during the first half
of 2023. “They have a job, and they have confidence they can get
another job if they need to. So that’s a really tough nut for the
Fed to crack,” she said.

The clip went viral
[[link removed]], likely
because of the matter-of-fact, unempathetic tone in which Cavanaugh
called for mass unemployment and destitution. But her message was
hardly unique and, in fact, echoed statements made by President
Biden’s own Fed chair, Jerome Powell.

“Reducing inflation is likely to require a sustained period of
below-trend growth, and there will very likely be some softening of
labor market conditions,” Powell stated
[[link removed]] on
September 21, 2022, using economics jargon to refer to reduced wages
and increased unemployment.

There was no mistaking the upshot of what he said. “Buckle up,
America: The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment,” read
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CBS News headline a few days later.

The highly disputed economic theory behind such policies is that, when
not enough people are out of work, wages get too high, which means
that companies are forced to hike their prices, and inflation ensues.
In fact, US wages lag behind
[[link removed].] inflation,
companies’ price hikes are well above
[[link removed]] the
rate of inflation for wholesale products, and many corporations
are profiting handsomely
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the current economic environment. Perhaps most importantly, when
workers are less worried about losing their jobs, they can be more
emboldened
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exercise their power on the job, including by unionizing their
workplaces — something the owning class is firmly against.

No matter the justification, the fact that powerful people are pushing
for increased joblessness as a “solution” to inflation should, in
itself, set off every alarm about our economic system. Each new person
who becomes unemployed represents a life upended, possibly thrown into
destitution or even premature death. Studies show that unemployment is
associated with increased death rates
[[link removed]],
declines in mental and physical health
[[link removed].],
and heightened relative risk of suicide
[[link removed]]. In a country where
pandemic-era expanded unemployment insurance has dried up, and health
insurance is tied to employment, those thrown out of work have little
social safety net to fall back on.

These are not just numbers on a spreadsheet — these are lives. That
they are treated as surplus, or even dispensable, is a damning
indictment of our economic system.

The fact that powerful people are pushing for increased joblessness as
a ‘solution’ to inflation should set off every alarm about our
economic system.

But there is another reason why the current discourse is so unnerving:
“Job creation” is the holy grail of US politics. It is the thing
that every politician says they do, that every pundit says they
support, that every CEO says their business provides. It is the
ultimate trump card, the way to win any argument in Washington.
Capitalizing on the essential need under capitalism that the vast
majority of us have — that to feed ourselves, keep a roof over our
heads, and take care of our families, we need jobs — the idea of
“job creation” is used to justify some of the most violent and
destructive systems on Earth.

We could be creating jobs to make the world a more just, more
democratic, and more dignified place for everyone. We could be
creating green jobs to repair and prepare for past, present, and
future extreme weather events; or hiring more nurses and teachers at
underfunded public schools; or expanding our public health
infrastructure to treat COVID-19 and prepare for future pandemics.

But for the most part, that kind of job creation doesn’t happen in
the United States. Instead, we get job creation to keep building
prisons, even amid growing concern about the racism and cruelty these
institutions inflict; to continue extracting fossil fuels, even as
scientists warn of catastrophic, existential consequences; or to keep
manufacturing weapons used to inflict mass atrocities in countries
like Yemen
[[link removed]].

When used to justify investments in the security state, or to serve
the interests of capital, job creation is essential — it is the
highest good. But when workers get too much power, or are not quite
precarious enough for the likes of the owning class, jobs become the
problem, and Americans are deliberately thrown out of work.

This seeming contradiction at the heart of US politics is, in fact, no
contradiction at all. Both orientations advance a reactionary
political project, serve the interests of the rich and powerful, and
ward off more liberatory ways to envision dignified labor and worker
power.

Always “Creating Jobs” for War-Makers and Polluters

This orientation is on full display when it comes to the military
industry. “Job creation” has long been used to justify massive
weapons contracts — and to override concerns about how those weapons
will be used.

During his administration’s escalation of the war in Yemen, former
president Donald Trump touted a massive 2017 arms deal with Saudi
Arabia, the country leading the onslaught, by repeatedly claiming it
would create five hundred thousand jobs for US citizens (a number that
would prove to be inflated
[[link removed]]).
Biden has continued
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greenlight multibillion-dollar weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. In
October 2022, NPR’s Jackie Northam speculated
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“Well, some Democrats in Congress want the US to freeze weapons
sales to Saudi Arabia. But, you know, those represent a lot of
American jobs.”

William LaPlante, Biden’s appointee to top weapons-buyer for the
Pentagon, has embraced the “jobs” justification to call for
massive investments in the military industry. In an October
2022 article
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the Department of Defense, he is quoted touting the importance of
massive investments in cutting-edge military industry research and
manufacturing, in part because it is important for the US workforce.
“We must work to support American workers, by scaling up talent
pipelines that will support the advanced manufacturing careers of the
future,” he said.

Throughout his career, LaPlante has moved from government to industry,
then back to government. And, in turn, LaPlante’s “jobs”
justifications echo the industry’s. Weapons trade groups like the
National Defense Industrial Association aggressively tout the
importance of tremendous public investments in the “defense
industrial base” for job creation in the United States. And
individual weapons companies do the same, among them Lockheed Martin,
which champions
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astronomically expensive and malfunctioning
[[link removed]] F-35
fighter jet as “delivering tens of thousands of high paying, high
quality jobs to American workers across the country, and around the
world.”

“Job creation” is used to justify the mass transfer of public
funds to a private military industry that produces the F-35 and other
weapons. Stephen Semler
[[link removed]] of the research
organization Security Policy Reform Institute estimates
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the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act
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put $452 billion in military contractors’ pockets. This legislation
was overwhelmingly passed and praised
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the military industry jobs it would supposedly create.

Such claims of job creation should not, of course, be taken at face
value. Heidi Garrett-Peltier wrote in a 2017 paper
[[link removed]] for
Brown University’s Costs of War project that

education and healthcare create more than twice as many jobs as
defense for the same level of spending, while clean energy and
infrastructure create over 40 percent more jobs. In fact, over the
past 16 years, by spending money on war rather than in these other
areas of the domestic economy, the US lost the opportunity to create
between one million and three million additional jobs.

Imagine the good that jobs in education, health care, clean energy, or
infrastructure could do in the United States and across the world.
Instead, we get jobs like the ones at companies like military
contractor Lockheed Martin, which made the bomb
[[link removed]] that
killed forty children when it was dropped on a school bus in Yemen in
August 2018. Raytheon made the bomb
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was dropped on a northwestern Yemen detention center in early 2022,
killing at least eighty people and wounding more than two
hundred. (Raytheon’s CEO has urged
[[link removed]] the
Fed to orchestrate a “slowdown in the economy” and thereby boost
unemployment, even as the company has historically used
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supposed status as a job creator to boost business.) Why would we
choose to protect and expand the jobs at manufacturers of these
weapons rather than jobs that protect and expand the public good?

The same could be asked about fossil fuels. The oil and gas industry
routinely inflates
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about how many jobs are created by extraction. But that doesn’t stop
politicians and pundits from echoing industry talking points, and
using those to defeat climate policy, even amid unspeakably dire
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about the consequences. West Virginia senator Joe Manchin has used
claims about protecting jobs to play a pivotal role in blocking
climate protections, for example, even as he has had a direct
financial interest
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the flourishing of the fossil fuels industry — and as he has called
on
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Fed to increase interest rates and hike up unemployment. Summers,
too, has advocated environmentally destructive policies in the name of
“jobs,” arguing
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2014 in favor of US oil exports because, in part, they “will
generate substantial employment opportunities.”

Likewise, on the local, state, and federal level, claims about
creating and protecting jobs are a key mechanism used to maintain and
expand prisons and jails, in a country where nearly two million
people [[link removed]] are locked
up. Activists seeking to reverse this trend face a chorus of voices
warning about job losses, and this chorus plays an instrumental role
in keeping the US prison population the largest in the world
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In just one example, Republican representative Hal Rogers of Kentucky
has thrown his support behind a proposal to build a new federal prison
in Letcher County, Kentucky, which his office says
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economy and create jobs.”

Job creation claims are made about other sectors, too, for
example, wind and solar projects
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But prisons, fossil fuels, and weapons manufacturing stand out
because, in these areas, claims about job creation are paramount to
their maintenance. Job creation is used to override the most rational
concerns and stark warnings about harmful and reactionary systems.

Of course, jobs do matter — no one should dismiss concerns about
good, union, dignified work. We need to create new jobs, and fast. We
can’t transition away from war, fossil fuels, and incarceration by
leaving workers behind. And indeed, rising prices are a real problem,
but there are better ways to respond
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throwing people into unemployment: for example, raising the wage
floor, putting constraints on corporate cost hikes, and improving
social supports.

But we are already seeing that the present political response to
“inflation” is premised in treating working people like they are
disposable, throwing them out of their jobs without basic compassion
or social programs to fall back on. When held up against the endless
drumbeat of “job creation” used to justify systems of violence and
destruction, it becomes clear that the political class’s professed
concerns about jobs are disingenuous: this is rhetoric is used to
advance the interests of capital and the security state.

That pundits and officials are so openly contradicting one of the
greatest ideological underpinnings of our political system should give
us all whiplash — and push us to question the ideological
“truths” that guide US policy. “Job creation” is a catchall
when justifying the most damaging institutions in our society, a
capital-friendly pseudo-populist truism beloved by politicians because
it sounds good and offends no one. Instead of demanding basic living
standards, higher incomes, union growth, or true working-class power,
politicians who insist on “job creation” can appear to care for
the worker while propping up the Chamber of Commerce.

Recent calls from our elites to increase unemployment to drive down
wages and reduce worker power expose the vacuity of this framework.
“Jobs” are an unassailable good when politicians are trying to
sell a prison, or casino, or oil extraction, but unimportant — if
not harmful — when labor power gets a bit too powerful.

_This article is a joint publication of Jacobin and Workday
Magazine [[link removed]], a nonprofit newsroom devoted
to holding the powerful accountable through the perspective of
workers. Joshua Mei contributed research to this article._

_Sarah Lazare is web editor at In These Times. She comes from a
background in independent journalism for publications including
the Intercept, the Nation, and Tom Dispatch._

* job creation
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* military industrial complex
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* unemployment
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* Economic Policy
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