Professors of Wharton propose ideas: "Labor Day 2011: Not Everyone Will Be Celebrating"

KnowledgeToday, September 2, 2012.

...Acknowledging the importance of jumpstarting the economy and getting people back to work, President Obama plans to lay out a jobs agenda in a speech to Congress on Thursday.

KnowledgeToday asked several Wharton professors to each propose one idea for getting people back to work.

Peter Cappelli, director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources and professor of management: “The most successful government policy for encouraging jobs is hiring subsidies — programs where the government gives employers some kind of subsidy for each new hire they make, usually in the form of a tax break of some kind. There has been extensive research on these programs, especially in Europe where they have been popular, and they work better than anything else at promoting new jobs. They have been tried in various forms in the U.S., mainly to help disadvantaged workers get into the labor market, but they were also used after the 1991 recession to promote hiring. While the results have not been spectacular, they are better than any other option under consideration.”

Mauro Guillén, director of the Joseph H. Lauder Institute and professor of management: “There are two types of unemployment — long-term and short-term. It is impossible to design effective policies that do not distinguish between the two...