An unbylined item appearing at the Associated Press shortly after midnight (captured in full as a graphic here due to its brevity; for fair use and discussion purposes) crowed about how President Barack Obama "is looking to boost summer job prospects for kids," has "gotten commitments for nearly 180,000 youth employment opportunities for next summer," and only says that "Many of the positions would be unpaid training opportunities."
How many? Well, most, according to the Hill's Eric Wasson:
Obama to launch summer-jobs initiative
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.
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.
In 60 days, the administration plans to create a jobs bank in order to facilitate more hiring of youth for summer jobs.
If that "jobs bank" (which by the way probably duplicates dozens which already exist) works like Cash for Clunkers, school will be in session again in August and September before anyone is placed.
The main point though, is that the AP wouldn't tell readers that about 60% of these "jobs" aren't jobs at all (one must get paid to be classified as holding a job and being employed, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics spokesperson). Even Wasson at the The Hill chose to obfuscate a bit by only concentrating on the number of "paid" positions. I doubt that either the AP or Wasson would be so considerate to a Republican or conservative president.
A related post is at BizzyBlog.com.
