(Washington Post) — Keeping a mayoral campaign promise to hold a job-creation summit, Mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray assembled about 50 company chiefs, entrepreneurs and college presidents to discuss how to tackle one of the Ditrict’s most frightening statistics: an unemployment rate as high as 30 percent in Ward 8. Employers repeatedly brought up obstacles – from government policies and labor disputes to social ills – that prevent them from hiring D.C. residents. Despite about 300,000 jobs that are expected to be developed in the District over the next decade, George Mason University professor Stephen S. Fuller opened the summit by challenging Gray (D). He and others urged the city to prepare residents for those jobs but also to bring in industry that could match the skills of the unemployed and underemployed.
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