InsIde PersPectIve
Closing the Gap
A successful path to fuller employment has implications for
people in business and will require a focus on law. BY BRAD SMITH
As unemployment stubbornly remains above 9 percent, there are increasing calls for businesses to
invest more and create more jobs. After all, corporate profits have recovered since the depth of the
recession that began in 2008. Typically, by this stage of a recovery, job growth has accelerated and
unemployment has started to fall more substantially than is currently the case. ¶ Increasingly, peo-
ple look to businesses and ask us why things appear to be different this time. The answer is complex
but important, both for the companies we serve and for the country as a whole. ¶ One important
insight comes from the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, which currently estimates
that the unemployment rate for individ-
uals with only a high school diploma is
10 percent. In contrast, unemployment for
individuals with a college degree or more
is only 4. 6 percent. We have high unem-
ployment for one group of Americans and
much stronger employment for another.
BRAD;SMI TH;is SVP, general counsel and
corporate secretary of Microsoft Corp.
