08.02.13

Sessions Comments On July Jobs Report

"We need to refocus our economic policy in Washington to deal with the economic realities of our time. Instead, Washington continues to centralize power—helping the well-connected while punishing the average citizen."

WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, issued the following statement today regarding the new employment figures for the month of July:

"This morning’s jobs number of 162,000 demonstrates that we still aren’t adding enough jobs to get Americans working again.

Underlying today’s jobs report is a set of far more troubling statistics that have not gotten sufficient scrutiny. A large and growing number of Americans are simply no longer part of the labor force. Only 55 percent of U.S. adults are working—millions have either permanently give up looking, moved back in with parents or relatives, retired early, or become dependent on government aid. Too little is being done to help get these Americans back into the productive economy. Meanwhile, working Americans have seen their wages continue to fall and median household income has dropped 8 percent since 2000.

These are deep and systemic problems arising from a variety of sources: the decline of American manufacturing, an increasingly burdensome and punitive tax and regulatory code that makes it harder for U.S. workers to compete, health care policies that grow government but shrink private sector hiring, welfare policies that undermine upward mobility, and a government stimulus policy that helps businesses and traders but not workers. Yet, despite all these problems, Washington’s focus right now is on an immigration bill that would reduce wages even further and increase unemployment—as CBO confirms—by drastically expanding low-skill immigration.

We need to refocus our economic policy in Washington to deal with the economic realities of our time. Instead, Washington continues to centralize power—helping the well-connected while punishing the average citizen."