Federal action is urgently needed to help create jobs. The unemployment rate is still 9%, and job creation seems to have stalled again. (When part-time workers, and people who’ve simply given up looking, are included, over 16% of the working population – one person in six – is not able to find full-time employment.)

This is a tremendous hardship for millions of individuals, and their families. Unused talents and resources also needlessly sacrifice future growth and prosperity – and the problem gets worse as time passes.

There are many tools that the President and the Congress can use to increase demand in the economy, and help to create jobs: spending on infrastructure (roads and bridges); investment in scientific research and technology; investment in education; cuts in payroll taxes; and targeted tax cuts to promote hiring and business investment.

None of this would have to be wasteful spending – just speeded-up spending on things that are useful in any case.

For purposes of this petition, we shouldn’t get bogged down in the details at this moment: the most important thing is that our elected officials clearly understand the human cost of continued high unemployment and under-employment, and the urgent need to act.

In the medium and longer term, we also need to be very seriously concerned about the country’s debt and deficit. But the immediate need is jobs: getting people back to work so that they and their families can survive, and the economy can grow more quickly. Each person at work again is another person paying taxes, and not requiring government spending and services.

We cannot afford another one to two years of political gridlock, and economic desperation for millions of people. January 2013 – after the next election -- is too long to wait for the President and Congress to act. We need our elected officials to do something now.