Increasingly, adults are heading back to school to improve their career prospects and earning power, and are turning to CareerBridge.Wa.Gov (www.CareerBridge.Wa.Gov) for answers from the state’s first education “consumer reports” website.

In many cases, Career Bridge details how many students completed an educational program, whether they got a job, and how much they earned-providing a new level of accountability and transparency for those considering where to go to school, and what to study.

Ultimately, Career Bridge enables potential students to sort through dozens, if not hundreds of training programs, and enroll in one that matches their interests and is likely to lead to a living-wage job.

The website also connects to employment data from the state’s Employment Security Department so users can learn whether an occupation is in demand, what it pays on average and its projected growth rate.

“Education can be costly in both time and money. This online database makes it easier to find the training that will make you competitive for the job you seek” said Eleni Papadakis, executive director of the website’s sponsoring agency, the Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board. “The consumer report side of Career Bridge means you can find the training that best suits your needs and budget.”

High school students involved in career planning are also using Career Bridge to chart their next educational step. The site includes an Explore Careers area that allows students to view their interests and abilities and how they align with a potential career. The site also shows students ways to pay for their education through federal and state grants, scholarships, tax credits and work study.

The Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board is a partnership of labor, business and government, dedicated to helping Washington residents obtain and succeed in family-wage jobs, while meeting employers’ needs for skilled workers.

Finding a job is the best substitute for an unemployment check, but as more and more Americans exhaust their jobless benefits, employment opportunities remain sparse.

In July, the state unemployment rate was 8.6 percent, down from 9.5 percent a year ago; however, in parts of Washington it is in double-digits.  The Portland-Vancouver metro area reports 13.3 percent unemployment, about the same as last year.  Economists worry that it may take years for our economy to return to its peak of a couple of years ago.

Ironically, the longer we experience high unemployment, the harder it will be for private employers to begin hiring.

That’s because Washington employers bear the entire burden for funding unemployment benefits.  Many small businesses in our state saw their unemployment insurance (UI) taxes jump 300 to 400 percent the beginning of this year, and preliminary indications are employers may have to brace for an average 27 percent increase in January.  In addition, state lawmakers returning to Olympia will face intense pressure to increase unemployment benefits further, which will increase the UI taxes even more.

Employers are caught in a vicious cycle.  Our unemployment system is experience rated, meaning that as layoffs increase, UI taxes increase as well, leaving employers with less money to keep people working and create new jobs.  In addition, there’s an additional socialized UI tax which requires all employers to share the burden of UI taxes on employers who went out of business or are in highly seasonable occupations.

Unfortunately, skyrocketing UI taxes are just part of the problem.

Some lawmakers want to hike general taxes as well to bail the state out of its projected $3 billion revenue shortfall, and next January, employers will face yet another round of increases in workers’ compensation taxes, which pay for workplace injuries.

In essence, private employers could be looking at a triple whammy next year: higher taxes and fees, higher unemployment taxes and higher workers’ compensation premiums.

None of the several initiatives on the ballot this fall addresses the vicious cycle of UI taxes.  But astoundingly, union leaders and some legislators plan to introduce legislation that will increase unemployment benefits, extend coverage to more people who quit their jobs, and add additional weeks of jobless benefits — all of which will push UI taxes even higher.

They need to understand that higher unemployment benefits are counterproductive if they cripple employers’ ability to hire or, worse yet, put them out of business.  Legislators should focus on increasing jobs, not jobless benefits.

As the listless economy shambles on, the state’s UI trust account, funded by employers, is being drained.  Hopefully, it won’t go bankrupt as it did in the 1980s, forcing us to borrow from the federal government to pay unemployment benefits.

Currently, 31 other states have exhausted their unemployment insurance trust accounts.  Since the recession began, those states have borrowed just under $40 billion from the feds, and the situation is expected to worsen by year’s end.

Borrowing money to pay jobless benefits creates a larger problem as employers — the job creators — will be hit with even higher taxes, because the loans must be repaid with interest.

The best solution to joblessness is jobs.  Instead of constantly expanding jobless benefits, legislators should help spur job creation by reducing regulatory costs for employers, cutting taxes, and providing economic incentives.  A reenergized economy will provide more tax revenue to the state, replenish the unemployment trust account and give working families the security of a job.

There really is no substitute for a paycheck.

About the Author

Don Brunell is the president of the Association of Washington Business. Formed in 1904, AWB is Washington’s oldest and largest statewide business association, and includes more than 7,000 members representing 650,000 employees. AWB serves as both the state’s chamber of commerce and the manufacturing and technology association. While its membership includes major employers like Boeing, Microsoft and Weyerhaeuser, 90 percent of AWB members employ fewer than 100 people. More than half of AWB’s members employ fewer than 10. For more about AWB, visit www.awb.org.

By Don C. Brunell, President, Association of Washington Business

With unemployment stubbornly stalled at 9.6 percent, the Obama administration is desperately looking for ways to get the economy moving again.

Recently, in a meeting with my manufacturing counterparts from around the country, President Obama’s representative read a speech about all the administration is doing to spur manufacturing in America. Specifically, she tried to enlist our help in convincing companies to invest the $1.8 trillion they’re holding in reserve in added production capacity and new products and services.

While we share the president’s goal, the fact is these are uncertain times in a fluid political environment. The one thing investors and companies need — from giants like Boeing to tiny Printcom Inc., in Burien — is certainty.  They have to know that if they take their money out of savings and buy a new machine or hire new employees, they have a reasonable chance of recouping their investment.

Currently, that’s not the case.

Uncertainty about higher taxes, increasing regulations, health reform costs, cap-and-trade and lopsided pro-union policies have many employers and investors sitting on the sidelines.  The Obama representative sincerely promised to take our concerns back to the White House. Did any of us believe it would make a dent in the president’s thinking?

Heck no! That’s the problem.

Employers fully expect Congress to come back in a lame duck session after the November elections and jam through anti-business legislation.

First on the agenda:  card check legislation, which eliminates the secret ballot and allows union organizers to look over workers’ shoulders as they “vote” whether to form a union.

The unions call it the Employee Free Choice Act, but it is anything but free choice.

Even former U.S. Senator George McGovern, a liberal pro-union icon who was the 1972 Democrat presidential candidate, called card check fundamentally wrong.  He wrote in The Wall Street Journal:  “I spent some time running a hotel. It was an eye-opening introduction to something most business operators are all-too familiar with — the difficulty of controlling costs and setting prices in a weak economy. Despite my trust in government, I would have been alarmed by an outsider taking control of basic management decisions that determine success or failure in a business where I had invested my life savings.”

Also on the agenda may be some form of cap-and-trade legislation. This legislation would set emission limits for carbon dioxide and then charge a fee to manufacturers, utilities and others who exceed those limits. In Europe, this scheme has crippled competitiveness without improving air quality, yet Congress seems intent on implementing it anyway.

It seems today that in the president’s haste to set historic political landmarks, such as Obamacare, the impacts of those policies on employers are disregarded, even in the midst of a severe recession.

We asked the president’s representative to go back to Washington and tell Congress and the president to start listening rather than telling employers what’s best for them. Stop bashing business and stop all these new costly programs that the American people don’t want and can’t afford.

Rich Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes, said it best in his recent column, “The Forgotten Employer.” Wrote Karlgaard:  “In a national debate about jobs and job creation hardly anyone is talking to the job creators about jobs. The forgotten man in this crisis is the employer.  We forget him at our peril.”

About the Author
Don Brunell is the president of the Association of Washington Business. Formed in 1904, the Association of Washington Business is Washington’s oldest and largest statewide business association, and includes more than 7,000 members representing 650,000 employees. AWB serves as both the state’s chamber of commerce and the manufacturing and technology association. While its membership includes major employers like Boeing, Microsoft and Weyerhaeuser, 90 percent of AWB members employ fewer than 100 people. More than half of AWB’s members employ fewer than 10. For more about AWB, visit www.awb.org.