Obama Partners With Business Leaders To Expand Manufacturing Jobs

President Barack Obama is partnering with the chief executive of Motorola Solutions Inc. (MSI), a co-founder of Groupon Inc. and the chairman of Accenture PLC (ACN) to help get community college students into manufacturing jobs.

Obama is traveling Wednesday to Northern Virginia Community College, where he is set to discuss the importance of manufacturing in America--a key theme of his re-election effort, the White House said. The manufacturing sector, until May, had seen job increases since October 2010.

Obama is working with business leaders, community colleges and manufacturing organizations to help prepare college students to work in manufacturing jobs in steel mills, automobile plants and computer fabrication facilities. A key part of the initiative will be an effort by the Manufacturing Institute, a non-profit affiliated with the National Association of Manufacturers, to provide 500,000 community college students with industry-recognized credentials.

While the plan is to tailor credential programs based on needs of employers in a given area, there's no guarantee getting a certificate will lead to a job.

"Now, that won't always be able to absolutely translate into a one-for-one job," said Ron Bloom, assistant to the president for manufacturing policy. Bloom said the probability of credentialed students getting jobs is "obviously far, far better than if you're simply training yourself abstractly without knowledge of what the needs of the local employers are."

Obama will be getting help from some big names, including the co-founder of the online coupon company Groupon and executives from Snap-On Inc. (SNA), Motorola and Discovery Communications Inc. (DISCA). The president has reached out in recent months to prominent business leaders to help spread the word about some of his economic initiatives.

It's unclear what impact the initiative will have. There are 13.9 million Americans who would like to work but can't get a job. The unemployment rate edged up to 9.1% in May from 9%, stoking fears that the U.S. economy would fall back into a recession.

Obama said Tuesday he wasn't concerned about a double-dip recession but was worried about the slow pace of job growth. "We are on the path of a recovery, but it's got to accelerate," the president said. He also cautioned, "We're going to have some days where things aren't going as well as we'd like."

-By Jared A. Favole, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9256; jared.favole@dowjones.com

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