Global Job Summit Set for Detroit

President Clinton will hold an international job summit in Detroit next month to tackle the global problem of persistently high unemployment, the White House announced Saturday.

Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers said in a statement that the March 14-15 conference will bring together economic, labor, finance and industry ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized democracies: the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, France and Britain.

A White House message sent to the other governments said Detroit was “a working city that has embraced change, met the challenges of technology, and lives and dies by international trade.”

“Holding the jobs conference in Detroit will send a message that we intend to confront the challenge of job creation and unemployment, not retreat to the economic structures of yesterday,” it said.

During a G-7 meeting last July in Tokyo, Clinton announced his intention to convene such a conference. He said the G-7 officials would “search for the causes and possible answers for this stubbornly high unemployment.”

“There are things each of us can do within our nation, and (if) we do it together, that will help us not just to grow the economy but to ensure that economic growth means more jobs for Americans and more jobs for the world,” Clinton said.

He said in July that leaders of other industrialized democracies “are as frustrated as I am that no matter what they seem to do for their economy, the jobs aren’t coming along.”

There has been some improvement in the U.S. jobless picture since then.