A day after the dismal news that the United States lost 553,000 jobs in November, President-elect Barack Obama outlined some of his job creation and economic recovery plans—including a strong emphasis on improving broadband access. In his regular Saturday morning message, Obama promised “the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s” and “the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen.” Then the president-elect—who made a point from the beginning of distributing his message online through YouTube as well as traditional radio—placed broadband alongside those efforts:  “As we renew our schools and highways, we’ll also renew our information superhighway. It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption. Here, in the country that invented the internet, every child should have the chance to get online, and they’ll get that chance when I’m President – because that’s how we’ll strengthen America’s competitiveness in the world.”

Obama also sees the internet as integral to fixing health care: “In addition to connecting our libraries and schools to the internet, we must also ensure that our hospitals are connected to each other through the internet.” What this actually means is still being worked out but broadband access clearly is going to have higher priority in the next administration. The brief video is embedded after the jump.