White House Uses Emojis To Make Its Economic Case To The Youth

Say it with tiny flexing arms and mortarboards.

WASHINGTON — The White House is preparing a new emoji-based social media campaign to make its economic pitch to young people, BuzzFeed News has learned.

Starting Thursday, White House social media accounts will blast out charts, graphs, and yes, emojis, aimed at catching the eye of young voters weeks before the November elections.

Even the staid administration report illustrating administration efforts to reduce student loan costs and boost enrollment in the Affordable Care Act for younger Americans — both of which contribute to improved economic opportunity for those starting careers, according to the White House — has a youthful flavor. "15 ECONOMIC FACTS ABOUT

MILLENNIALS," reads the cover of the White House Council Of Economic Advisors report.

Inside the report, the news is not all good. The economic downturn that helped fuel youth support for President Obama's 2008 campaign still haunts younger Americans, the reports authors find.

"[T]he Great Recession will at least affect Millennials' labor market performance as well

as savings and investment behavior in the short-term, though at this point, it is still too soon to know how large and lasting these impacts will be," reads one of the report's conclusions. Millennials interested in home ownership are still squeezed by a tight credit market, the report finds, and lasting fallout from the recession on the labor market means millennials are staying with the same employer longer than their counterparts in Generation X.

"[T]he long-term impacts of these changes are unclear and there are both benefits and costs to longer tenure at jobs," the report finds.

The focus of Thursday's social media campaign — student debt and Obamacare — also get a lot of ink in the report. The Affordable Care Act means young people "are much more likely to have health insurance coverage than young workers in the past," the report says. But a rise in student loan payment delinquencies, especially among students enrolled in for-profit schools or those who don't graduate, shows some millennials are facing a heavy financial burden even before they enter the job market, the report finds.

Younger Americans have traditionally been a Democratic base group, and Obama's team has done a masterful job of turning them out in his presidential campaigns. But college aged voters have much lower turn out rates in non-presidential election years, and the White House is hoping to prop up those numbers during next month's crucial election that will determine control of the Senate.

A look at the White House social media campaign on millennials and the economy:

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