Politico, August 15, 2016: The Economic Idea Missing from Clinton’s Jobs Plan

“Clinton has proposed a $275 billion infrastructure program and spoken about bringing back manufacturing jobs by cracking down on currency manipulation and negotiating better trade deals. But those policies largely don’t help the millions of low-paid service sector workers that tend to benefit from subsidized employment. The labor market for the construction industry, for instance, is tight already, so a big infrastructure program is unlikely to create many new jobs; as for manufacturing, the sector employs less than 10 percent of the workforce. The unemployment rate for the leisure and hospitality industry, on the other hand, is still 6 percent, above the 4.9 percent national average. In wholesale and retail, it’s 5.2 percent. Clinton’s platform includes some policies to help those workers, such as increasing the minimum wage. But experts believe a subsidized jobs program would provide an additional level of support for sectors of the economy that receive less attention from policymakers. Such a program has an additional benefit of being industry-neutral, meaning all industries have an equal opportunity to participate in it.”