I guess random bouts of trifling executive actions are one of the few things he can really manage to do these days — in between flying all over the country to fundraise for Democrats, natch. In his State of the Union address earlier this year, one of the ‘promises’ Obama pronounced was to “train Americans with the skills employers need, and match them to good jobs that need to be filled right now. That means more on-the-job training, and more apprenticeships that set a young worker on an upward trajectory for life. It means connecting companies to community colleges that can help design training to fill their specific needs. And if Congress wants to help, you can concentrate funding on proven programs that connect more ready-to-work Americans with ready-to-be-filled jobs.” …I guess that’s what this is supposed to be, i.e. another chance to talk about how Congress is tying his hands with their obstructionist inaction, via Reuters:

American companies will need 522,000 software developers and computer programmers over the next 10 years as well as nearly 110,000 pharmacists, 224,000 electricians and 941,000 customer service representatives, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

To try to fill the void, Obama will announce during a visit to Oakdale, Pennsylvania, a plan to use $500 million in existing Labor Department funds to pay for a competition.

The goal of the competition is to spur employers and community colleges to work together and develop training programs that are designed to get workers prepared for specific jobs that already exist.

Another $100 million will be drawn from a Labor Department fund to support programs aimed at training apprentices in new fields with fast-growing occupations such as information technology, healthcare and advanced manufacturing.

Employers need people trained as welders, machinists, dental hygienists and even electrical power line installers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.

Hey, remember when the economy flowed so smoothly and robustly that people could afford to make investments by themselves, for themselves in career development like dental hygienist training, sans any sort of top-down government spending? Man, those were the days.

Once again, rather than truly reducing the many government barriers to prosperity, the White House just keeps piling them on and inventing more ways to redirect taxpayer dollars toward top-down intervention.