I am not an economist, economics is not now and never has been an explanatory source when it comes to commerce. I am the first person to think about and write about the nature of commerce.
There are three types of commerce: trade, industrial and clientric. Trade thrives in any environment, the goal is profit from each single sale. Industrial commerce and clientric commerce, on the other hand, thrive only in an environment with a stable long term horizon.
Industrial commerce is concerned with lowering costs by expanding markets and innovating production. Industrial commerce can only start and grow within a stable long term horizon.
Clientric commerce is built on lifetime relations between the business and clients...a priori requiring long term stability.
Large and medium size companies provide most jobs. Firms with 500 employees or more provide exactly half of all jobs in the U.S.
Small businesses (excluding sole proprietors), twenty or fewer employees, provide 20% of the jobs in the U.S. This is a key job creating sector.
The other big force that keeps commerce from creating jobs may be my newly coined term: the FDR Syndrome. From 1932 to 1940 unemployment in the U.S. (page 4) was high ranging from 20% to 38%. FDR created a climate of financial and commercial uncertainty. That is the FDR Syndrome.
Financial and commercial uncertainty is what is happening today as Congress meddles with four pillars of the U.S. economy. The four pillars are autos, residential housing, construction and healthcare. Autos are under government supervision, so is residential housing both are in a realm of high uncertainty; construction was most impacted by the stimulus in unknown ways (probably disrupting long term markets) and healthcare is under a black cloud of uncertainty.
The combination of weak lending to small business and government created uncertainty for all business could be the explanation for high unemployment.