US manufacturers added about 5 lakh jobs in 3 years: Obama

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Asserting the manufacturing sector added about five lakh jobs in the last three years, US President Barack Obama today said there was a need to accelerate this trend and make it a “magnet” of high-tech jobs and manufacturing.

“After shedding jobs for more than 10 years, our manufacturers have added about 5,00,000 jobs over the past three. What we need to do now is simple. We need to accelerate that trend,” Obama said in his weekly radio and web address to the nation.

He said there was need to launch manufacturing hubs across the country that will transform hard-hit regions into global centres of high-tech jobs and manufacturing.

“We need to make our tax code more competitive, ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas, and rewarding companies that create jobs here at home,” he said.

The President said there was need to invest in the research and technology that will allow the country to harness more of its own energy and put more people back to work, “repairing our crumbling roads and bridges”.

Obama has addressed meetings in North Carolina, Georgia and Chicago to put forward his agenda of economic growth. These steps, he argued, will help US businesses expand and create new jobs. “But we also need to provide every American with the skills and training they need to fill those jobs. Let’s start in the earliest years by offering high-quality pre-school to every child in America, because we know kids in these programmes do better throughout their lives,” he said.