Suddenly, politicians are concerned about jobs--yours and theirs. Last week President Bush, a longtime fan of free trade, talked up his plan to crack down on overseas manufacturers unfairly stealing jobs from Americans. The next day, congressional Democrats said they intended to harp on the jobless issue by bombarding Republicans with proposals to expand employment. Then two Democrats, Sen. John Edwards and retired Gen. Wesley Clark, launched their presidential campaigns with promises to restore jobs. At week's end, Democratic front-runner Howard Dean, who used to lead off his speeches with criticisms of the Iraq war, tried out a new opening line: "I want to talk about jobs."

There's no mystery as to why politicians are paying so much attention to the job market: "It stinks," says Cary Snyder, an out-of-work Silicon Valley engineer whose out-of-work daughter recently moved back in with him. True, the economy has been growing since the end of 2001, the index of leading economic indicators has turned up, and the stock market is rising again (story, Page 31). In addition, there has been a slight uptick in temporary hiring, generally considered an indicator of more-permanent jobs to come. But overall, the job market remains dismal. During this "jobless recovery," employment has shrunk by 1.1 million, almost entirely because of manufacturing layoffs, and unemployment remains stubbornly above 6 percent, near its nine-year high.

There are plenty of troubling signs for the future. R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings said last week it would begin slashing its workforce by 40 percent or 2,600 jobs, continuing the slow death of manufacturing jobs. And even some formerly strong service industries started laying off. Banks and tech firms continued to export white-collar jobs to China and India, part of an exodus that a 2002 Forrester Research report predicted will move 3.3 million service jobs overseas within 15 years. And mortgage lenders such as Countrywide Financial and E-Trade--which had created more than 50,000 new jobs in the past three years--said they were starting to downsize because higher interest rates had slowed the refinancing boom. As a result, nearly one quarter of all Americans now say they--or someone in their household--are very concerned about losing their job, the highest job insecurity level in a decade.

The timing of the sudden attention, wasn't much of a mystery either. "After so many years in the wilderness, we're glad manufacturing is front and center," says Darren McKinney, spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers. Why has it taken so long? "It would be naive to think the campaign season had nothing to do with it," he says.

The turnabout is, in fact, almost purely politics. Until recently, polls have shown that the biggest concerns on voters' minds have been noneconomic issues like terrorism and war. It has only been in the few months since the war in Iraq has wound down and the United States has escaped further acts of terrorism that voters have begun to obsess much more about their own financial futures. "Jobs and the economy are clearly the No. 1 issue in the country, overwhelmingly so," says David Winston, a GOP strategist. "The person who can offer the best solutions--and they have to be directly related to job creation--is going to carry the day."

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