Walmart, FedEx, IBM vow new opportunities for millions of US workers
The booming economy is presenting a big opportunity to put Americans back to work, but the problem is there are fewer workers than jobs.
The White House on Monday held its first meeting of the National Council for the American Worker that aims to provide American students and workers with the skills they need to prosper.
Although the U.S. has more than 6.6 million job openings, many Americans still remain unemployed and may need retraining and support to re-enter the workforce.
“What we are doing is we are really ramping up the efforts to get people the training they need to get a job and to encourage them to use the bully pulpit like right here to encourage people to get right back in there and try,” said White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Kevin Hassett to FOX Business’ Charles Payne on Tuesday.
Already employers across the nation have agreed to train millions of American workers, he said, including Walmart, FedEx, the National Retail Federation and IBM.
The administration is also creating, “with a sense of urgency,” he said, a second counsel that will evaluate the training programs and puts the onus on employers to help people remaining on the sidelines.
“We found that there are these job training programs that the government runs that were scattered across a zillion agencies and they are not accountable. They don’t have to show that they help people get jobs and people haven’t really evaluated them carefully and said, ‘These work, those don’t’,” said Hassett.