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Top News Today
In an effort to connect ready-to-work Americans with ready-to-be-filled jobs, the president announced that the White House has secured commitments from some of the nation’s largest companies in a carefully designed plan to boost hiring of the long-term unemployed. The initiative is part of Mr. Obama’s pledge to use his executive powers to help create jobs, even in the absence of supportive action from Congress.
“What we have done is to gather together 300 companies, just to start with, including, some of the top 50 companies in the country, companies like Walmart, and Apple, Ford and others, to say let’s establish best practices,” Mr. Obama told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “Because they’ve been unemployed … so long, folks are looking at that gap in the resume and they’re weeding them out before these folks even get a chance for an interview.”
“Statistically, the long-term unemployed are oftentimes slightly better educated, some cases better qualified than folks who just lost their job,” Mr. Obama added. “Just because you’ve been out of work for a while does not mean that you are not a hard worker.”
Although the economy continues to slowly recover from a years long recession, the number of workers who have not found a job for at least 6 months or more has grown. This is the group the president hopes to target specifically.
“Do not screen people out of the hiring process just because they’ve been out of work for a long time,” Mr. Obama said.
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According to Gene Sperling, director of the president’s National Economic Council, at least 21 of the 50 largest companies in the country – and a total of more than 300 businesses – have committed to make hiring practices inclusive and to remove barriers to employing the long-term jobless. Employers including AT&T Inc., Citigroup Inc., Ford Motor Company, PepsiCo Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., News Corp. and Xerox Corp have all agreed to the pledge.
The companies “all took very seriously what it meant to sign on to a pledge publicly like this,” Mr. Sperling said. He added that their commitments were not an admission that they had done anything wrong, but a promise to use their best hiring practices going forward.
"Last week's State of the Union Address wasn't just a bunch of hot air for President Obama, as he is already showing that he intends to put his money where his mouth is."
Well DJ…we shall see.