The current (June 30 cover date) issue of Forbes contains excellent
articles by Rich Karlgaard and Amity Shlaes.

Karlgaard makes the point that the pundits (on both sides but notably Paul
Krugman) who are trying to explain the lack of new jobs all seem to have
not bothered to ask any employers why they're not hiring.  One would think
that if one wanted to know why employers weren't hiring one might want to
ask a few employers, but maybe that's just me.

Karlgaard points out that the government has made it very expensive (even before
Obamacare) to hire new employees; I noted over a decade ago that employers would
rather pay the existing help a lot of overtime than hire new help for them.

Back in 1994 Immanuel Hospital in Omaha was running its computer room 24x7x365
with *four* people, two of which had to be there during the day shift on weekdays.
Since Immanuel used the same software package that Bergan Mercy (my employer
at the time) did, Immanuel asked Bergan (which used 7 people to staff its computer
room) if any of us would like to pick up some hours there so their people could have
some time off.  Since I had a *great* schedule (4x10 hour shifts) I offered to work
one night (graveyard) a week there and did so for several months - and was paid time
and a half for the hours by Bergan (presumably Immanuel reimbursed them).  16 hours
of OT per pay period is habit forming .  Note that at Immanuel the computer 
operators only ran the mainframe, at Bergan we ran the mainframe *and* three 
AS-400 minicomputers - and at night we were also the general fix-it person for
computer problems anywhere on the premises.

--- FleetStreet 1.19+