Out of a Job? Create One! Despite all of the hullabaloo about health care reform, I propose that the number one problem we're facing right now is jobs -- rather, the lack of them. According to the U.S. Department of Labor , the unemployment rate in August was 9.7 percent, with 216,000 net jobs vanishing that month. That doesn't count 9.1 million people "working part time for economic reasons" or 2.3 million people "marginally attached to the labor force." When you factor in people who have just plain given up, the real unemployment rate is easily in the mid-teens. No industry sector is unaffected, including high tech. According to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) , worldwide chip sales amounted to $51.7 billion, a 17-percent increase from the first quarter. SIA president George Scalise is encouraged "to believe that the sequential increase in quarterly sales represents a gradual recovery of demand." Recovery, or dead-cat bounce? At this point it's too early to tell. In either case, this looks to be a jobless recovery , like the one we all went through after the Tech Crash of 2001-3. I managed to stay employed in Silicon Valley during those years and watched the new thinking that emerged during that recession. "If you lay off half your people and work the remaining half twice as hard, you wind up with the same output and much lower cost." What MBAs call a no-brainer! Semiconductor companies have also responded to the recession by cutting costs either