Report: Nearly 75% of ex-Bush officials looking for jobs are unemployed Stephen C. Webster

Published: Saturday February 21, 2009





Print This Email This While the market for job-seekers in the United States might be sour, for most it isn't as impenetrable as it is for the nearly 3,000 former members of the Bush administration.



Between 70-75 percent who are looking for full-time work still haven't found new jobs, according to a Saturday report by the Wall St. Journal.



"That 'is much, much worse' than when Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton left the White House," Carlos M. Gutierrez, who served as Bush's commerce secretary, told the paper.



For many, the traditional refuge of conservative think tanks in Washington, D.C. has become a Fort Knox, with almost no positions available, and certainly not for lower-rung Bush officials.



The think tanks "lack interest in hiring high-profile Republicans when Democrats control the White House and Congress," said the Journal. "Mr. Bush's low approval ratings at the end of his term don't help, said Leonard Pfeiffer IV, a Washington recruiter for nonprofits."



In the US at-large, 6.54 million are receiving unemployment benefits, according to the Department of Labor.



"A handful of Bush cabinet officers have accepted academic appointments," reported the paper. "Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson joined Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies as a fellow. Condoleezza Rice, previously secretary of state, resumed her Stanford University roles as a political-science professor and senior fellow at its Hoover Institution think tank."





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