Clean Energy Jobs Go Swimming: $300 million per year for 10,000 jobs

This is part of a series of brief posts on 'clean energy jobs' opportunities for sparking meaningful employment, quickly, in the United States.

Legislation is, they say, analogous to making sausage. Sometimes, in the mixing and mashing, seemingly well-intentioned and sensible options can create counter-productive situations and leave many valued goods on the table. One small example of this could open the door to creating employment, lowering costs for state & local governments (including educational institutions), improving 'customer' satisfaction, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

When it came to the stimulus package earlier this year, "swimming pools" were explicitly excluded from ARRA funding mechanisms.  While, amid serious economic stress and government investment to keep the economic from continuing in freefall, it might have seemed morally appropriate to do this, this restriction simply flies in the face of reality and good sense.

...by a wide Margin!

I kid you not. Today boasted the data release of 'Non-farm Payrolls' and the unemployment rate -- two of the most intensely watched measures of U.S. economic health.

This month showed that 51,000 jobs were created in the month of September -- about 80,000 FEWER than the market expected. However, August's job creation numbers were revised upwards by about 60,000 jobs. So the 2-month total came out slightly weaker than expected.

As expected, the Dollar dropped on that negative economic information -- but wait!

Along comes the 600 pound gorilla -- or maybe I should say the 810,000 pound gorilla.

That's right. Something called a 'Benchmark revision' to prior job creations were upped by an astronomical 810,000 jobs.

In all my years in the business, I've never heard of such an enormous revision -- almost clownish:O

Now comes the strange part...

Last night I attended a showing of the Motherhood Manifesto documentary. This documentary highlights the work of MomsRising.org, a growing movement with over 50,000 members - and particularly their effort to end employment discrimination against mothers.

I'm all for ending that discrimination - my own mother was denied a job because she was asked a question to determine whether she had daughters or sons (one of the benefits the employer offered would have been considerably more expensive for daughters). Yet I was left with a subtle feeling of increased anomie after the show. 24 hours of thinky thoughts later, I think I know the source of my discomfort, and I also have a new outlook on business and labor law.