William J. Holstein

Too Much Optimism on Jobs
APRIL 5--The news accounts were very upbeat about the jobs numbers Friday, and so was President Obama. I understand the thirst for optimism, but we should remind ourselves that roughly a quarter of the new jobs being created were for the census. That means these jobs will disappear at some point. And another major hunk of the new jobs were temporary positions, which also could fade away.

My point, as always, is that we need to concentrate on creating high-wage, sustainable jobs through innovation. Even Tom Friedman got that figured out in his column Sunday. Friedman has no idea how to achieve that--he thinks that merely encouraging immigration automatically results in innovation. But he is right that we need to be creating small and medium sized companies in highly innovative fields. That's where real job growth can occur.