Obama asks CEOs for help hiring long-term unemployed

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Confronting the persistent joblessness that has marred the economic recovery, President Barack Obama won commitments Friday from more than 300 companies to reach out in their hiring to the nearly 4 million Americans who have been unemployed for half a year or more.

“It’s a cruel catch-22,” Obama said at a White House event with CEOs, job training groups and advocates for the unemployed. “The longer you’re unemployed, the more unemployable you may seem.”

Obama called that “an illusion” because, he said, such workers often are better qualified and better educated than workers who just recently lost their jobs.

In addition to convening CEOs and getting their hiring pledges, Obama also signed a presidential memo directing federal agencies not to discriminate against those long-term unemployed workers in their own hiring practices.

As a percentage of the total labor force, the number of people who have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks — 3.9 million — is the highest in four decades. The number doesn’t include Americans who have been looking for so long that they have given up.