WASH­ING­TON–Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma got com­mit­ments from near­ly 300 com­pa­nies to reach out to the near­ly four mil­lion Amer­i­cans who have been job­less for half a year or more.Oba­ma said at a White House event with chief ex­ec­u­tives, job train­ing groups and ad­vo­cates for the un­em­ployed: "The longer you're un­em­ployed, the more un­em­ploy­able you may seem."Oba­ma called that "an il­lu­sion" be­cause, he said, such work­ers are of­ten bet­ter qual­i­fied and bet­ter ed­u­cat­ed than work­ers who just re­cent­ly lost their jobs.

Oba­ma al­so signed a pres­i­den­tial memo di­rect­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment not to dis­crim­i­nate against those long-term un­em­ployed work­ers in its own hir­ing prac­tices.The event and the memo il­lus­trate the types of tar­get­ed, non-leg­isla­tive mea­sures Oba­ma promised to un­der­take to ex­pand eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty dur­ing his State of the Union ad­dress last week. Oba­ma has de­clared 2014 a year of ac­tion for his ad­min­is­tra­tion, but his chances of win­ning leg­isla­tive vic­to­ries are slim in an elec­tion year and with a di­vid­ed Con­gress.

AP