Study: Tax Rate Reductions will not Reduce Unemployment Rate

A study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) has found that most businesses do not believe that reducing business tax rates will improve employment rates. To the contrary, a mere 3 percent of polled HR pros said that high business tax rates actually make hiring more difficult. Two other factors often blamed by politicians for the lack of American jobs, high labor costs and outsourcing, were also not recognized by respondents as primary drivers of unemployment. Just 9 percent said current high unemployment is due to high labor costs and 12 percent reported that outsourcing was greatly impacting the employment rate. No, the primary culprit for the continuing high unemployment rate was reported to still be the economy.

Global issues and economic uncertainty were those causes selected by the surveyed HR professionals of high unemployment. The unemployment was explained as a natural response to the global recession by 39 percent of respondents and 37 percent said economic certainty causes reluctance on the part of companies to hire more staff. However, the survey also found that companies are in the process of preparing for global expansion with 93 percent of respondents saying that their company would maintain or expand global workforces within the next three years. And among high-performing companies, virtually 100 percent reported plans for hiring more workers.

The full report, High-Performance Global Staffing: Shifting Labor Supplies and Strategies, is available to i4cp member organizations at i4cp.com.