Last week’s employment report is good news because it shows some improvement over the previous month’s report, or indeed over much of the data for the past two years. But, it’s qualified good news because it relies so much on the anomalous effects of the ongoing U.S. Census that it’s obvious there is still no detectable trend for employers to resume hiring. So we know that the U.S. government can “create” jobs, though in this case they’re temporary.

This is confounding, because the urgency of last year’s $787-billion federal stimulus program was to spur industrial activity that would promote job creation. Speaking on television Sunday, White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers (a former Treasury secretary and an economist who ought to understand this) assured the nation that stimulating job growth is President Obama's "preoccupation."

For the past year we’ve seen that good intentions and even direct incentives will not encourage employers to start hiring if those employers cannot be assured that doing so is in their own best interests. And, encouraging an atmosphere of uncertainty about the future costs of doing business will make employers cautious about their future financial obligations.

The government, at least in the American system, isn’t expected to create jobs; it shouldn’t assume the responsibility to do so. The government’s responsibility is to implement policies that will encourage employers to create jobs.

“One of the great surprises of the economic downturn that began 27 months ago is this,” the Washington Post wrote last week: “Businesses are producing only 3 percent fewer goods and services than they were at the end of 2007, yet Americans are working nearly 10 percent fewer hours because of a mix of layoffs and cutbacks in the workweek.”

This should not be a “surprise.” Businesses don’t scale back their goals when the results are unsatisfactory. They try something different. If they succeed in a new way, they don’t resume the old practices. So, businesses have accomplished the productivity gains that economic planners prescribed, but without the employment levels the planners expected.  The mistake is in the forecast, not the performance.

"It is an episode that we're going to -- we, economists in general -- are going to want to understand better and look at for a long time," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke testified about the "extraordinary" productivity gains he had not expected.

Understanding better would certainly include recognizing that businesses think and act for themselves, so regulatory restraints and financial barriers that government agents put in place will cause them to deviate from the results that planners anticipate.