You open your main leader by reminding the reader that if all the unemployed from the mainly rich members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development lived in one country, its population would be similar to that of Spain (“The Quest for Jobs,” September 10, 2011). Many of them are young, and an ever-larger number of them are unemployed for a long time already. Although you eschew the frightening word, this smacks of depression. And depression would require special measures, of which you mention a boost to infrastructure spending, such as building roads and repairing schools. Precisely. At the risk of sounding like some retired professor of construction economics, this sector offers two advantages in the current crisis. First, it can usefully employ even the least skilled. Second, it has a strong effect on all the other sectors because it uses goods and services from the entire national economy. No other sector could save more than forty-million people from unemployment while providing something useful for all. As well as for a long time to come.