BP may have screwed over the entire nation with the Gulf oil spill but it's throwing a lifeline to one of the neediest groups — the unemployed.

BP, in what may be its first brilliant PR move since this thing started, is teaming up with unemployment offices in states affected by the oil spill to hire more than 4,000 unemployed people to help clean it up.

Qualified Community Responders, or QCR’s as BP calls them, will perform a variety of tasks, including "carrying or handling materials and supplies, wiping or washing oil-covered items and removing trash and other debris." They’ll even pay for your training. QCR’s will be paid $18 an hour and supervisors will earn $32 an hour.

If you have a job and are bummed you don’t qualify, don’t worry – they’re recruiting volunteers, too. But, consider yourself warned: The privilege of visiting contaminated areas is strictly reserved for the unemployed. Volunteers will “only be permitted in non-contaminated areas.”

It’s not just BP hiring for the cleanup, many firms are hiring for oil spill-related jobs, advertising everywhere from Facebookto Craig’s List. On Craig’s List New Orleans, for example, a search for “oil spill” in the job listings turned up 76 results , with firms hiring everything from clean-up workers and bus drivers to drive them there, to sales people to help sell local companies clean-up products and, yes, PR people.

Who knew all it took was a disaster of epic proportions to jumpstart the jobs market?

More on the Gulf Oil Spill:

• Redesign BP's Logo Contest Helps Public Vent Rage
• BP Buys Oil-Related Search Terms on Google
• Slideshow: Scenes from the Gulf Oil Spill
• Watch a Live Video Feed of the Underwater Oil Leak
• Complete Coverage
  

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