Thursday, January 5, 2012

Most of these jobs are not jobs at all. That is, the majority are unpaid. Nothing is wrong with that; unpaid internships are a valuable way to gain work experience to up employability in the future. But for the president to tout those unpaid internships as “jobs” is disingenuous.

Obama targets teens with new summer "jobs" program - HotAir

Then, too, as Republicans like House Speaker John Boehner have pointed out, plenty of these positions would exist regardless of whether the president took any interest in them. But the president has taken in interest in them, for the same reason he has taken an interest in — oh, I don’t know — recess appointing partisan hacks to the National Labor Relations Board. He suspects that support for summer jobs will help his reelection effort.

President Obama on Thursday will unveil a summer-jobs initiative that the White House says is already on track to create 180,000 “work opportunities” in the private sector in 2012. - The Hill

That is the number of opportunities, which includes mentoring and unpaid internships, that companies have told the administration they are willing to create. Some 70,000 jobs are paid, the White House says.

The initiative was hatched after Congress failed to approve a $1.5 billion summer-jobs fund that President Obama had been seeking as part of the American Jobs Act.

“Today’s announcement is the latest in a series of executive actions the Obama administration is taking to strengthen the economy and move the country forward because we can’t wait for Congress to act,” a White House statement reads.

Coming Soon: ‘Work Opportunity Summer’ - Michelle Malkin

Goodbye “Recovery Summer” — Hello “Work Opportunity Summer.”

Alternate headline for partisan pessimists: Obama administration to create 110,000 unpaid volunteer jobs...