Aiming to help unemployed Americans find new careers, the initiative launched Tuesday with a virtual roundtable organized at the White House with Ivanka Trump and business leaders, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, and a revelation from one of the ads, a 30-second ad with a handful of people telling their job stories.
“Now, as a result of Covid, people need, unfortunately, in some cases to learn a whole new skill,” Trump said Tuesday at the launch. “But that is also an opportunity for a new trajectory for them and their lives and we want to facilitate that connection with the workforce and make it as seamless as possible.”
“Find Something New” was quickly criticized on social media, more vociferously for its title, which can be interpreted as too simplistic a slogan to describe the collapse of unemployment that is occurring for millions of Americans as a global pandemic continues to devastate health. physical and financial.
Although employers brought millions of workers back in May and June when the nation reopened, the economy has still lost nearly 15 million jobs since February, and more than 1 million people apply for unemployment benefits for the first time each week.
There may be a new round of layoffs as many states are forced to pause or reverse their plans to reopen amid the new wave of cases. Additionally, multiple retailers and other companies have recently announced store closings, filed for bankruptcy, or warned that significant reductions could occur.
This is not the first time that Trump has been publicly criticized for being out of step with the country’s mood.
In April, while tweeting the guidelines of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for people to stay home as the pandemic spread, and during a nonessential travel ban set for Washington, DC, Trump went to his family vacation home at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
During the July 4 holiday, Trump posted on his social media so that people are “safe and responsible” and “follow state and local guidelines to keep you and your loved ones safe,” recalling the social distance and use of masks. However, that same day, his father organized a large celebratory event in South Dakota on Mount Rushmore, where there were no social distancing precautions and hundreds of people in the audience were not wearing costumes.
The “find something new” ad campaign, a product of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, which Trump created in 2018 and co-chairs with Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, is also endorsed by AdCouncil and corporate sponsors.
An accompanying website directs people to other avenues of career interest, explores training options and checklists, challenging unemployed Americans to “find their way.”
Trump has recently championed non-college and university work programs, instead promoting technical and vocational jobs and trades. Trump herself graduated from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
Trump’s current White House portfolio ranges from childcare and family tax credit to workforce development, human trafficking and global economic empowerment of women.
CNN’s Tami Luhby contributed to this report.
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