On January 5th, President Obama offered his new summer jobs initiative, with the intention of creating 180,000 work positions during the time when schools are primarily out for summer vacation. However, only 70,000 of these jobs in the initiative would be paid positions, with the expectations of filling the other 110,000 accomplished using voluntary, or internship programs.
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.
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.
“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.
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said the “opportunities” are all new and were not jobs that would have existed anyway. – The Hill
As you can see from the White House spokesperson, the jobs created would be 'new' ones, even though 60% would offer no paycheck, or benefits to workers. The end result will be that these hirings would be used to buffett the unemployment rate, lowering it deceptively at a time leading into the 2012 elections.
Just as the new unemployment rate supposedly fell to 8.5% in the jobs report issued on January 6th, what was left out was how many workers fell off the roles because their unemployment insurance ended, and they were no longer counted as looking for work. These numbers are validated in data provided today by Zerohedge that shows more than 7.5 million workers have dropped out of the labor force since 2007, and thus are not counted in the formal unemployment rate reports.
Americans have been decrying their government to help create jobs since the crash and recession of 2008, and in nearly every instance, Congress and the White House have failed to put forth a concrete plan to get people working. Instead, the focus has been on manipulating labor reports, employment rate charts, and with President Obama's new summer jobs initiative, create unpaid positions that can be used to boost employment just before the end of year election cycle.
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