Waiting For Employment Godot

The Washington Post editorial board has some helpful advice on preventing structural unemployment.

NEW DATA CONFIRM that the economy continues to recover slowly from the worst recession since the 1930s. Good news: The private sector generated 268,000 jobs in April, the most since February 2006. Bad news: The unemployment rate remains stuck at 9 percent of the workforce, up from 8.8 percent in March. But, good news: The higher rate reflects job-seekers reentering the market because their prospects are better.

The main point is that unemployment remains well above what it should be; the longer this persists, the more we risk a “new normal” of structural unemployment, which is a fancy term for elevated human suffering and snowballing economic waste. We dare not let this happen. The question, though, is how to generate the new jobs.

Big new fiscal and monetary stimulus is probably not the answer...

Mmm, delicious Hayekian principles.   We dare not let structural unemployment happen, but actually doing something about it is off the table.  Here's the rest of their plan:

1)  Do nothing about the risk of structural unemployment.

2)  ????????

3)  PROFIT!

Which, if you look at the 1Q 2011 numbers coming in for business profits, why this is exactly what's happening, except, you know, for the actual jobs part.  The profit part?  Well that's down cold.