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Play Bingo with the president

Marketplace Contributor Feb 12, 2013

President Barack Obama is delivering the first State of the Union Address of his new term on Tuesday evening. The address is the president’s chance to lay out his agenda for the year ahead. In his address, he is expected to return to his progressive themes heard during the election — and he is expected to urge Congress to approve more tax revenue increases.

One word we can expect Obama to utter is, of course, ‘jobs.’ How many have been created under his watch — remember, over the course of the past four years, the U.S. lost 4 million jobs, then created more than 5 million. Net gain: 1.2 million. The education and health care fields created many of those jobs.

Why? We’re getting older and trying to get wiser. But it also may be hard to replace workers in those fields with technology.

“Education and health care are two sectors where location really matters,” says economist Ronnie Chatterji at Duke University. “The bedside manner of a physician, for example. Or a teacher being in the same classroom as a student.”

Other sectors seeing net job gains included retail, leisure, and energy. Though there are signs of economic improvement, millions of Americans are still struggling to find work. The U.S. created 157,000 jobs in January, but the jobless rate remains stubbornly high at 7.9 percent.

Obama is also expected to address immigration reform in his State of the Union.

Many in tech sector will be watching to see how he address high-skilled immigration. But how high a priority does the administration place on innovation and technology?

“We have a president who is incredibly passionate about the power of technology and innovation to improve government,” says White House chief technology officer Todd Park. Park says the government is already working to attract tech entrepreneurs.

“We’ve actually found a lot of people in government who are very entrepreneurial, who are extremely mission-oriented, brass-knuckled, and want to get things done. We’ve actually also found that it is incredibly beneficial to bring people from outside government to complement the people that we’ve got to deliver even better results,” says Park.

What topics do you expect Obama to address? Immigration? Afghanistan? Gun control?

What phrases do you think he will say?

“We the people?” Obama used that phrase during his second inaugural address. How about, “great nation?”

It’s safe to say that words like “Congress” and “jobs” are givens.

Print out our handy Bingo cards and play along while the president addresses the nation. Click on the links in the sidebar to see larger versions of our cards for you to print.

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