The Job Creators Network, voice of real job creators, says that two things are effectively “storm clouds over [employment] gains” Those two things are the proposed minimum wage hikes, and the National Labor Relations Board ruling.
The chief executives of the group say that the politicians in Washington D.C. appear to be intent on wiping out any chance of the jobs market improving. The most recent jobs report showed what they called “another tepid month of job creation,” and continuing economic weakness was compounded by the “storm clouds of bad public policy.”
“In just the last week, Washington and Big Labor organizers again declared their plans to hike the cost of hiring by calling for a steep minimum wage increase,” Anthony & Co. chief executive Jim Anthony said. “And in a shocking move, the National Labor Relations Board announced plans to upend the franchise business model and pave the way to unionize hundreds of thousands of small businesses.”
The U.S. Department of Labor pegged the August unemployment rate at 6.1 percent, with labor force participation rate at a miserable 62.8 percent. The Job Creators Network says the real unemployment rate is more like 10.7 percent, because millions of Americans have dropped out of the workforce and, by the way the system ignores those people, they are no longer counted.
CEO Jim Anthony, a member of Job Creators Network, says the price of Washington’s bad ideas will swiftly undo the minimal job growth gains we have been seeing recently.
“Chances are your local McDonald’s is run by a franchisee who is a local entrepreneur, the type of person who creates most of the new jobs in this country. Even mediocre jobs reports like this one will become less likely if Washington hangs the pro-union NLRB bureaucracy around the necks of the small businesses making most of our progress.” – Jim Anthony, Anthony & Co. CEO
The jobs reports from the previous two months were weak. The August jobs report showed a miniscule improvement in the statistics, which put the unemployment rate at 6.1 percent. In July unemployment worsened by 0.1 percentage point and in June there was a 0.2 percentage point improvement.
Jim Anthony points out an inconvenient truth for the administration. “The government’s own experts say the President’s $10 minimum wage proposal will kill hundreds of thousands of jobs, and this $15 proposal would wipe out far more.”
Anthony says “Bad public policy always hurts good people, and we can’t hike the cost of hiring and pretend it doesn’t hurt anyone.”
On Labor Day, President Obama promoted raising the minimum wage to $10.10. The Congressional Budget Office predicts this would wipe out work for 500,000 Americans. Looking to destroy more than half a million jobs, demonstrators picketing outside fast-food franchises called for a staggering $15 minimum wage.
The Job Creators Network says the voice of real job creators has been missing from the debate on jobs, and prefers to talk about paychecks, rather than politics.
