White House creates its very own jobs crisis

By Gina Chon

WASHINGTON (Reuters Breakingviews) - The White House is creating its very own jobs crisis. Press Secretary Sean Spicer quit on Friday after financier Anthony Scaramucci was hired to be communications director. Donald Trump also has fired his FBI director, undercut his Treasury secretary and regrets his attorney general pick. Just as U.S. employers wrestle with too few applicants, so too does the president.

Spicer was a loyal foot soldier from the first day of the Trump administration. After wrongly asserting that journalists had inaccurately reported the inauguration crowd size, he endured regular speculation about his job security and was regularly lampooned on "Saturday Night Live." Enough was finally enough for Spicer after Scaramucci, the founder of hedge-fund firm SkyBridge Capital, was brought into the West Wing.

Human-resource management has not been the president's strong suit. Mark Corallo, spokesman for Trump’s personal attorney Marc Kasowitz, just resigned as Kasowitz was demoted. Trump told the New York Times on Wednesday he wouldn’t have hired Jeff Sessions to be attorney general if he'd known the former senator would recuse himself from a Justice Department probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and potential campaign ties to the effort.

Earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin publicly praised Trump’s push to form a cyber-security unit with Russia despite criticism, including from fellow Republicans.

Shortly after, Trump tweeted that such an idea couldn't happen. In the first week of July, the government ethics director Walter Shaub resigned. In May, Trump abruptly fired FBI director James Comey, who was out of town at the time, partly because of the Russia probe.

Now six months into Trump’s term, more than 1,000 government vacancies remain open that require White House appointments. Trump has filled just over 100 senior positions so far, about half the number his two predecessors had appointed in the first four months of their terms. While some nominees withdrew for personal reasons or issues related to separating from their businesses, dozens of other have turned down the president.

There's something similar happening around the country. Although unemployment has recovered since the 2008 financial crisis, the labor participation rate hasn’t. It's a reflection on just how many people have become discouraged and stopped looking for work. For Trump, it's a phenomenon that is hitting close to home.

CONTEXT NEWS

- White House spokesman Sean Spicer resigned on July 21, according to the White House. Spicer opposed the appointment of SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci as President Donald Trump's communications director. The position has been vacant since Michael Dubke resigned in May.

- Scaramucci, a former Goldman Sachs banker, has been working in a senior role at the U.S. Export-Import Bank. After Trump was elected in November, Scaramucci was discussing a White House job as a liaison with the business community but it was never finalized. To prepare for that role, SkyBridge announced in January that it would sell a majority stake in itself to RON Transatlantic EG and HNA Capital, a Chinese firm.