I've been hearing a lot about jobs lately. I know you have, too.

The politicians are talking about them almost without even pausing to breathe. Which leaves the media types equally breathless, as they compete with each other for the best in economic wisdom at the fastest words-per-hour.

It makes sense. People are frightened of a world without jobs. Politicians ignore frightened people only at their own peril.

All of this leaves me wondering what's going to have to happen before our nation's leaders make the connection between jobs and microbusinesses.

Well, more than one connection, really.

There's the easy stuff, the screamingly obvious connection between microbusiness employers and the millions of jobs they create. But there's also the nonemployers — and that's a subject that requires enough real thought to be daunting for the average public servant.

From a public policy point of view, there is no one in a national leadership position who has even bothered to make a decision about whether nonemployers should be businesses or simply roving employees?

Perhaps they should be treated as some sort of labor force hybrid? But then, in what ways should we treat nonemployers like businesses and under what circumstances should they be treated simply as workers?

And, perhaps much more to the point, how is any of this going to help me to calm all those frightened people so they don't get mad at me and vote me out of office?

None of those things are really all that important right now. A much more urgent questions is this: in an economic and political situation in which policy makers need to do things to spur job growth, will it ever occur to them to give new nonemployer businesses any credit for taking some of that chore off their shoulders?

As of 2006, the self-employed (as calculated using nonemployer numbers) comprised roughly 14% of the civilian workforce and 9% of all working aged adults. Will they ever figure out that the more people choose self-employment, the more urgent it becomes for them to craft some sort of public policy response?

I'm sure they will, eventually.

I'm just curious about what sort of piano will have to fall on their heads before they do.