Obama Jobs Summit

President Barack Obama will host a jobs summit on Thursday, December 3, a day before the Labor Department reports new job numbers. Obama invited academics, business and labor leaders to a White House seminar to hear their suggestions on what might spark them to begin hiring again.

“Millions of Americans, our friends, our neighbors, our family members are desperately searching for jobs,” Mr. Obama said. “This is one of the great challenges that remains in our economy, a challenge that my administration is absolutely determined to meet.”

The roughly 130 attendees at Obama's jobs summit will divide into six discussion groups - on "green" jobs, boosting small business employment, government infrastructure spending, fostering growth of U.S. exports, business competitiveness and workforce development/training. The attendees include business leaders, union chiefs, academics, mayors and representatives of nonprofit groups.

The business leaders represent companies large and small, and both traditional and innovative. They include CEOs such as Eric E. Schmidt of Google, and Robert A. Iger of the Walt Disney Co. Carl Schramm, president and CEO of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, was invited by President Barack Obama to participate.

According to studies from the Kauffman Foundation, companies less than five years old have created all net new jobs in the United States since 1980. In 1997, young firms accounted for two-thirds of job creation.

Attendees also will include several liberal economists who have been critical of some administration policies, including Nobel laureates Joseph E. Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, the Times columnist, and Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University. The labor leaders include representatives of unions for service industry employees, steel workers and teachers. 

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