Jobs Report Demands Action on Jobs

Washington, DC – Today’s tepid jobs numbers for October show once again that the economy is not adding enough jobs to hire those coming into the job market, much less to begin to employ the 25 million Americans in need of fulltime work.

Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future responded to this morning’s news from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that the monthly unemployment rate dropped to 9.0 percent, with 80,000 new jobs in October.

Statement from Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future:

“This tepid growth will not help the millions of Americans who want to work who cannot find jobs. We need action from Washington now. Our elected officials must now focus on jobs. Jobs for the long term unemployed. Jobs for the young and for veterans coming into the worst job market since the 1930s. Jobs for a construction industry idled by the housing collapse. The President's Jobs Bill, while inadequate, would be a first step. Instead, governments at the local, state and national level are shedding jobs rather than adding them.

“There is no better evidence that the Super Committee – tasked with finding spending cuts or tax hikes – is on a perverse and destructive mission. Companies are sitting on trillions in profits looking for customers. Families are pessimistic and tightening their belts. Britain is in recession and Europe is headed there. As Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke has pleaded, we need action on jobs from the Congress.

“The current conversation in Washington is too much about what to cut and not enough about how to get the next generation of youth graduating high school and college in to the workforce: Let's put young Americans to work. The time for bold action on jobs is now.

“With Occupy Wall Street spreading like wildfire, the upper 1 percent need to stop fighting common sense solutions to today’s problems and should work with hard working Americans to bring the country together and fix our schools and fix our bridges and employ our youth. The time is now.”