Summer Jobs

As a part of President Obama’s renewed job creation efforts, he announced earlier this month plans to use portions of the stimulus to create 125,000 summer jobs for the nation’s teenagers. Apparently the teens in Oak Harbor, Washington haven’t heard:

In a down economy, you’d think young people would be fighting for jobs. But in Oak Harbor, that’s far from the case.

The first Oak Harbor stimulus-funded employee reported to duty Tuesday, but the city still has 18 positions available, paid for by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Mayor Jim Slowik made a public plea to local youth to apply for the temporary summer jobs during his closing remarks at a recent City Council meeting.

To date, only two of the 20 temporary summer jobs are filled.

“Many of the applicants don’t qualify, or they’re not interested in that type of work,” said Gerri Garcia of WorkSource Whidbey. “We’ve kind of been struggling.”

Would be interesting to know if other communities around the nation are having similar results?