Stocks open up as White House jobs summit kicks off

Wall Street opened higher on a day when Washington is laser-focused on unemployment.

In the first 15 minutes of trading, the Dow is up four-tenths of 1 percent.

The broader S&P 500 is up half of 1 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq is up seven-tenths of 1 percent.

President Obama is hosting a jobs summit today, inviting several top corporate executives to the White House to try to come up with a plan to ease the national unemployment rate, which stands at 10.2 percent, highest since the early '80s.

This morning, last week's new jobless claims were reported; they fell unexpectedly to 457,000, their lowest level in more than a year. This number is well off the number of jobs being shed in January, when the weekly new jobless claims numbers were in the 700,000s. Economists say and economy can't actually start creating jobs until the weekly new jobless claims number is well down into the 400,000s.

The summit comes one day before the November unemployment rate comes out, and it could tick even higher, turning up the heat further on Washington pols.

Join me today at 1 p.m., when I'll take your questions about the jobs summit, the national unemployment picture and whether we'll see jobs start getting created anytime soon.

Job creation divides politicians and business people like religion. Some are for government intervention, others are for tax breaks that would make it easier on businesses to hire.

We'll touch on all of those issues at 1 p.m. You can submit your questions now, if you like, by clicking here.

See you then.

-- Frank Ahrens
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