Over the last six months, the Obama campaign was a hiring machine (500 paid staffers in Florida alone), employing thousands of people as well as countless volunteers who left behind jobs to volunteer full-time.
In total, the campaign spent $46 million on salaries and benefits, an additional $1.7 million on political consultants, and $65,760 for get-out-the-vote workers, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
But now that the election is over, campaign staffers, like some 2.8 million Americans, find themselves out of a job.
According to campaigner and pioneer of online fund-raising and outreach, Joe Trippi, they do have options.
“They were just part of the best campaign in decades, if not ever, people will want that experience in their 2010 efforts and will be hiring now.”
Trippi adds: “Politics is fairly recession proof. Turns out the more messed up the economy is…the more those politicians need smart political staffers to help them save their own jobs.”
As for those coveted White House spots, Obama will need to hire about 448 staffers, everything from a Records Management Analyst, Director of Fact Checking, Ethics Advisors to Gift Analysts. Plus there’s the head of 16 executive departments, including the chief technology officer, and thousands of other appointments.
Obama’s transition co-chairwoman, Valerie Jarrett, told Meet the Press on Sunday the new administration plans on “hitting the ground running.” So those jobs should fill up in the next three months.
Already his transition team posted a job site on Change.gov, a new site launched Thursday to keep the public informed about the building of the new administration.
Adam Barr, the founder of DC for Obama and a former Obama field organizer in Pennsylvania, says, “I know a lot of people were jockeying [for White House jobs] before the race was even finished. My approach was to focus on the election, and if we won I would think about continuing. I literally just sent my resume in [to the transition team] two days ago.”
Barr hopes to apply his years of professional IT and program management experience in the new White House.
“I’m well suited for any position in that [IT and program management]. For a lot of people on this campaign all they have is campaign experience–they’re straight out of college. This is all their experience.”