Obama to focus on manufacturing during trip to Virginia

The Skills for America’s Future program is an industry-led initiative intended to improve partnerships with community colleges and create easier-to-understand, uniform job-training requirement standards for prospective manufacturing employees. Obama will speak about the program during a trip Wednesday to Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria.

The effort comes amid troubling signs for the economy that represent a huge problem for Obama ahead of his 2012 reelection bid. The unemployment rate ticked up last month as the economy added only 54,000 jobs, and other figures suggest a slowing economy.