Unemployment has threatened significant portions of the American population, including teenagers. With this issue in mind, the White House announced their plan to create 180,000 for young adults (16-24) with a goal of reaching 250,000.

Summer Jobs+ essentially partners with businesses, non profit organizations and other forms of government to provide employment for low income young adults. This program comes immediately after the president proposed a $1.5 billion plan to implement summer and year round jobs for this same age group but Congress did not act on it. Afterward the Federal Government and the private sector came together to create an alternative initiative. The Summer Jobs+ program is the result of those efforts.

Companies like Bank of America, Starbucks Coffee Co.  AT&T Inc. have committed to providing 26,850 jobs to the program.  Wells Fargo, CVS, Deloitte and Gap Inc., have also signed on to take part in this program.

You can get the rest of the story from the White House Press Release here.

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(Washington Post) — On the first day of the District’s summer jobs program, Mayor Vincent C. Gray said the administration had found funding to hire about 4,000 more young people on a citywide waiting list.  The effort to add other employees marks a departure for the Gray administration, which aimed to rein in the troubled program’s costs and logistics by capping it this year for the first time, at 12,000 participants. On Monday, the mayor said he wanted to give a job to every eligible youth who signed up.  Gray cited revised revenue estimates for the current fiscal year — showing an additional $107.1 million in revenue, largely because of an improving economy — to justify expanding the program, which pays 14- to 21-year-olds minimum wage to work in government agencies and local businesses.  “There are some additional tax dollars,” Gray said. “I said the first priority is to get kids off the wait list.”

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(Star-Telegram) — With teen unemployment at a staggering 25.7 percent among 16- to 19-year-olds nationally, go-getter teenagers may think that starting a business is a sure way to make spending money or save for college. But Bushinski said it’s a lot of work: “It seems that you would just hop into the truck and sell ice cream, but all the power stuff [to keep the ice cream cold], getting the money to start it up, placing the orders every night. … A lot more little things go into it than you would expect.”