President Barack Obama announced today that Jill Biden, the wife of Vice President Joseph Biden, will lead an effort to increase awareness about the availability of community colleges.

Obama, who spoke today at the White House, said the move was part of a general effort to make laid-off workers aware of opportunities for retraining. Obama said he wanted to “fundamentally change— the perception of unemployment to one in which workers not only look for new jobs, but also train for them.

Acknowledging the latest job-loss figures, which put the unemployment rate at a 25-year high of 8.9 percent, the president was careful to place blame for the losses on the Bush administration.

The losses were part of the recession that was “years in the making— and that will be “months or even years in the unmaking,— he said. And, while noting the job losses were not as bad as forecast, he said they were still “sobering.—

Biden, who has a doctorate in education, has spent the past 15 years teaching English at Delaware Technical & Community College.