Just When You Thought Ivanka Trump Couldn't Get More Out Of Touch

Are you one of the millions of Americans whove lost their job during this unprecedented public health and economic crisis?

Maybe youre one of the 5.4 million people who no longer has health insurance because you lost employer-provided health care.

Perhaps youre getting by on expanded unemployment insurance benefits, but stressed because the payments are scheduled to end this month and Congress shows little appetite to re-up. Or maybe youre weighing the health risks of returning to work. Or youre worried that when the eviction moratorium runs out this month, you might be homeless.

Maybe youre one of the millions of families struggling to afford food for yourself and for your children?

Well: Have you considered becoming a wind turbine technician?

This is one of several career suggestions from the White House, along with aerospace engineering and operations technician, broadcast and sound engineering technician, computer support specialist, and contact tracer. At a moment of unprecedented economic crisis, with an unemployment rate of 11.1% because of a once-in-a-century pandemic, their latest idea is: Learn a new skill .

On Tuesday, Ivanka Trump the 38-year-old daughter of a wealthy man who has never once had to worry about finding the money to pay a bill proudly announced an ad campaign called Find Something New , which encourages people to get new jobs by learning new skills.

If you visit FindSomethingNew.org, the website created for this effort, you will find a very short list of jobs that are actually growing right now, according to the Labor Department.

One such job is contact tracer, to deal with the worsening spread of the virus that has basically set our economy on fire. Other jobs, like registered nurse, require a serious investment in education hard to pull off in a pandemic when schools are shuttered and you might not have the resources to pay tuition. Or when you need work to keep your health insurance and cant simply go back to school.

We're in a moment of a moment of unprecedented economic crisis. The answer doesnt lie in giving people information about community college programs.

Trump cooked up this plan through her role as co-chair of the White Houses American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, created by President Donald Trump in 2018. The boards other co-chair is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, a multimillionaire who had his own let them eat cake moment during the federal shutdown last year, when he expressed confusion over why workers who werent getting paid would need to use food pantries.

A bunch of CEOs are on the advisory board, including Tim Cook of Apple and Doug McMillon of Walmart.

Even for this White House, this is a new level of chutzpah. Certainly its further evidence that Ivanka Trump profoundly does not understand womens economic issues despite her Lady Boss rhetoric .

Its also maybe the most extreme example of a certain conservative line of economic thinking, which views all economic crises as problems to be solved at the individual level, rather than through policy. Just pull up those bootstraps, folks !

Thats never really worked out before. These people were arguing about re-skilling during the slow recovery from the Great Recession, too, said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the progressive Economic Policy Institute and a former chief economist for the U.S. Department of Labor.

In the end, she said, the unemployment rate fell to a historic low without a big learn to code revolution. (Some Democrats also go to the well on upskilling , though their rhetoric is usually paired with social programs.)

Those claims were wrong back then, Shierholz said. Its more blatantly wrong now.

The argument is even more absurd in this moment because we are not seeing record unemployment due to a skills crisis. Were in a public health emergency.

More than ever our #PledgetoAmericasWorkers is focused on helping Americans bolster skills to find new jobs + navigate career transitions.

Today we are launching the #FindSomethingNew ad campaign!https://t.co/gS1JL50lcU

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More than ever our #PledgetoAmericasWorkers is focused on helping Americans bolster skills to find new jobs + navigate career transitions.

Today we are launching the #FindSomethingNew ad campaign!https://t.co/gS1JL50lcU
Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) July 14, 2020

Put simply, the reason people dont have jobs is that businesses shut their doors to help stop the spread of a virus. Then some reopened. Then, the virus got worse and businesses shuttered again. Other businesses are firing people because theyre not selling enough stuff, since its a pandemic and Americans are wary of doing a lot of things outside the home.

Other people are out of work particularly women because their children are home all the time and they need to care for them . They cant train to work in elevator installation and repair right now (one of the jobs on Ivankas list), because they cant send their kids to day care or summer camp, and soon enough theyll be home-schooling them.

Millions of others are sick, and cannot work.

Whats most disheartening is that the campaign is coming from the White House, which actually has the power to help unemployed people on a widespread scale.

This is just terrible economics. Its absolutely offensive, Shierholz said. You have actual power to influence policy that could really make a difference in working peoples lives. To come up with this, which will not, is just a slap in the face.

It just shows such a lack of understanding about running a government, she added.

The advisory board that Ivanka Trump sits on was created in 2018, when unemployment was low and a push to help people learn new skills made some sense. The Find Something New campaign was created by the Ad Council, a nonprofit that works on marketing campaigns for social issues.

Heres the core problem with trying to solve a huge macroeconomic problem on a person-by-person basis: At an individual level, it makes sense to try and learn a new skill to get work. For example, a reporter who loses their job at a newspaper could find work in, say, digital content production. Others could go back to school and become lawyers or nurses. Someone who lost their job at a bar or restaurant can get work at an Amazon warehouse or grocery store, sure.

But on a national scale, the strategy is flawed because it doesnt do anything about the actual number of jobs available. If everyone goes out and learns new skills at the urging of Ross and Trump, youll simply have a bunch of unemployed workers with new skills.

All the new openings at Instacart and Uber Eats wont employ all the out-of-work service workers in the U.S.

And though the jobs on the list are growing, there certainly wont be enough growth to absorb all the displaced workers out there. Take wind turbine technicians. That occupation is expected to see 57% growth, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics . But that only means an additional 3,800 new jobs between 2018 and 2028.