Obama To Talk Jobs As Illinois Struggles
UPDATED 09/08/11 7:20 a.m.
CHICAGO (CBS) -- President Barack Obama will announce his plan to create new jobs before a joint session of Congress Thursday night, and it can't come too soon for Illinois residents, where the jobless rate is higher than the national average.
As CBS 2's Susanna Song reports, the unemployment rate in the state was 9.5 percent in July, compared with 9.1 percent nationally.
Some suburbs have it particularly hard. In North Chicago, the jobless rate is 19.2 percent.
As President Obama prepares to deliver a speech to try to convince Americans he can create new jobs, the reality in Illinois is that companies are cutting back.
According to the Illinois Department of Commerce, 2,300 workers from 11 Illinois companies will receive layoff notices in the next few weeks.
Six hundred-thirty are restaurant workers with Chicago Restaurant Partners, a local joint venture that lost its contract with McCormick Place. Another 200 are from Lowe's stores that have closed in the Chicago area.
Local contractor Lawrence Mazur of Evergreen Park said he is juggling seven jobs, and barely getting 40 hours a week. He had some advice for the president.
"Maybe take funding from somewhere else and try to appropriate it into where it's needed, you know, like we're going in the Middle East; spending all this money on what? That should be spent on saving our country, not saving some other country. We've got to think about us first, before we fall apart," Mazur said.
Mazur said the situation has grown progressively worse for him and his family. More than anything, he says he wants to believe the president when he shares his plan for more jobs and economic growth.
But Mayor Rahm Emanuel says there is some hope. He announced 400 new jobs through Seaton Corp., a fast-growing national recruitment and staffing firm that is headquartered in Chicago.
"Great workforce, great transportation system in the city, great transportation from the city to anywhere in the country or world makes Chicago a natural selling point for them to, in this case, nearly double down on their employment, adding 400 more jobs to the city of Chicago by the end of 2012, bringing them to 1,600 hundred employees here in the city of Chicago," Emanuel said Wednesday.
Seaton's chief executive officer, Patrick Beharelle, had some thoughts how much President Obama can do to spur job growth.
"I think job creation in America, we've got some structural issues. It isn't something that the president necessarily can control or any administration can control," he said.
Beharelle said with technology wiping out jobs, and corporations shipping jobs overseas, the government should help with targeted job training. He hopes President Obama will address this.
"There are a lot of jobs open right now. There's over a million jobs open in the United States right now. The challenge is making sure we that have a workforce that's properly trained to take those jobs," he said.
Mayor Emanuel says he expects to hear the president focus on rebuilding roads, bridges, schools and airports – all projects that will help create jobs and expand corporations.
