During the 1980s, the struggling Ford Motor Company tried to turn things around by introducing an ad campaign that promised customers, "Quality is Job One."

Ford is in trouble again today, but so far has avoided the bankruptcies and federal takeovers that swallowed up both General Motors and Chrysler last year. Meanwhile, the White House has promised to make a "hard pivot" from a focus on health care to a focus on jobs. For the Obama administration, then, "job growth" is now "job one."

As well it should be.

The national unemployment rate, after all, seems stuck at nearly 10 percent. That's true even though workers are less likely to have lost their jobs than they were in our country's previous recession. "Employers shed 2.6 million more jobs at this point of the 2001 recession than in the current recession," notes labor policy expert James Sherk of The Heritage Foundation.

But despite far greater job losses, the 2001 recession never produced such high unemployment. Why? Because the current economy simply isn't generating nearly as many jobs as it did in 2001. "Lower job creation accounts for 59 percent of the reces¬sion's decreased employment," Sherk explains.