Labor Day and Jobs

USA Today got some experts together to discuss how to create jobs, and this is a great topic for today – our Labor Day. Wow, do we need jobs. The picture below is at a job fair in Atlanta.

What’s being done in your community? What are you hearing?

My neighbor was unemployed for two years; he’s 62 now. He got a part-time job at Dick’s Sporting Goods, and tells me all those around him are college educated grads (and each, he said, has a major in education).

More than two years after the Great Recession ended, some 14 million Americans are out of work, nearly half of them for six months or longer.

What’s worse, this bleak picture shows no signs of brightening soon. Economic growth is expected to plod along at a lackluster 2.5% pace next year, leaving the jobless rate hovering just below 9% by the end of 2012.

August’s unemployment rate remained at 9.1%, unchanged from July.

So they asked experts (and not Repub or Dem politicians, who — perhaps — have too much vested in which decisions are made). Here are their suggestions, but you’ll have to go to the link above to get the details:

1. Infrastructure work: repair roads, build bridges, and schools. (2 million jobs)

2. Give States a helping hand.

3. Add workers at a discount

4. Share jobs to save jobs.

5. Lower corporate taxes.

6. Train the jobless.

7. Cut red tape.