Obama: Ensure next Google is made in America to create jobs

President Obama made education the centerpiece of his weekly address, connecting it to the competitiveness agenda he has touted since the State of the Union.

Recording his weekly video outside Portland, Ore., where he visited Intel, Obama described education as the path to high-tech job growth. 

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We’ve got to have the best trained, best skilled workforce in the world,” he said. “That’s how we’ll ensure that the next Intel, the next Google, or the next Microsoft is created in America, and hires American workers.”

Obama described how he has made education “a top priority,” including by investing in community colleges and targeting academic standards in the “Race to the Top” program. 

He praised Intel for investing in education programs and for hiring domestically. The White House tapped Intel chief Paul Otellini for the president’s jobs council on Friday. 

“Even as global competition has intensified, this company has invested, built, and hired in America. Three-quarters of Intel’s products are made by American workers. And as the company expands operations in Oregon and builds a new plant in Arizona, it plans to hire another 4,000 people this year,” he said. 

The address hit many of the same themes Obama elevated during his State of the Union and in unveiling his budget proposal. 

“If we want to win the global competition for new jobs and industries, we’ve got to win the global competition to educate our people,” he said.