Unskilled Workers Report for New Jobs

(photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker

04 January 14

 

The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."

ixty-four unskilled workers will report to new jobs in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday as part of a federal jobs program that provides employment for people unable to find productive work elsewhere.

The new hires, who have no talents or abilities that would make them employable in most workplaces, will be earning a first-year salary of $174,000.

For that sum, the new employees will be expected to work a hundred and thirty-seven days a year, leaving them with two hundred and twenty-eight days of vacation.

Some critics have blasted the federal jobs program as too expensive, noting that the workers were chosen last November in a bloated and wasteful selection process that cost the nation nearly four billion dollars.

But Davis Logsdon, a University of Minnesota economics professor who specializes in labor issues, said that the program is necessary to provide work “for people who honestly cannot find employment anywhere else.”

“Expensive as this program is, it is much better to have these people in jobs than out on the street,” he said.