Atlantans, others head to Obama jobs summit

While unemployment hovers above 10 percent for all Americans, for young veterans it's more than twice that, Daywalt said. That's partly because many employers are reluctant to hire reservists who may be called back to service, he said, especially given the troop increases in Afghanistan that Obama announced on Tuesday.

"We've turned these guys into third-class citizens," Daywalt said.

Jump-starting small-business hiring and finding jobs for young veterans are just some of myriad issues attendees will be seeking answers to during the summit, which the Obama administration is hosting amid rising criticism that it isn't doing enough to promote job growth.

Wednesday, the Federal Reserve reported that the economy picked up in the late fall across most regions of the country -- Atlanta was one of four regions where conditions were little changed or mixed -- but unemployment is still predicted to worsen.

Some leading economists are now forecasting the nation's unemployment rate, currently at a 26-year high of 10.2 percent, will continue climbing to as high as 11 percent by mid-2010.

For Home Depot CEO Blake, who once worked for then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, "it's [an] important matter," company spokesman Ron DeFeo said.

"We've long said the stabilization of both the housing and job markets are two of the most important elements of the economy," DeFeo said.

Both Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are scheduled to address attendees Thursday. Other top administration officials will hold breakout sessions focusing on small businesses, infrastructure jobs, green jobs, training, international trade and other issues.

"The government alone is not going to create and doesn’t have the primary responsibility to create the jobs that will get our economy moving again -- that's the private sector," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. "What I think the president wants to do is hear from [attendees] on the type of environment that we can have that would allow for that hiring to take place."

Critics of the Obama administration say the White House needs to do a lot more than just hold meetings about jobs.

On his Web site, conservative icon and potential 2012 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich of Atlanta characterized the White House jobs summit as ironic given the "jobs valley" he said the Obama administration has created. Gingrich is countering the White House summit by hosting his own "Real Jobs Summits" across the country -- including one Thursday in Mississippi.

In Washington, U.S. House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio plans to hold his own jobs event Thursday to address what he calls Obama's and Democrats' "job-threatening policies."

Republican U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia stopped short of criticizing Obama's jobs summit. But the president should be considering more tax credits for businesses to help jump-start hiring, the senator said in an interview.

"There are some signals we can send as a government that would clearly open up some of the purse strings of corporate America," Isakson said.

"I think it would be important for the administration to look wherever it could to incentives that are appropriate to pro-growth and job creation and send the signal to businesses that we want [them] to have confidence," he said.