In a month where one might easily be confused by the official jobs numbers, the President followed up on CEA Chair Christina Romer’s excellent explanation this morning by laying down the bottom line:
This morning, we received the June employment report. It reflected the planned phase out of 225,000 temporary Census jobs. But it also showed the sixth straight month of job growth in the private sector. All told, our economy has created nearly 600,000 private sector jobs this year. That’s a stark turnaround from the first six months of last year, when we lost 3.7 million jobs at the height of the recession.
Now, make no mistake: We are headed in the right direction. But as I was reminded on a trip to Racine, Wisconsin, earlier this week, we’re not headed there fast enough for a lot of Americans. We’re not headed there fast enough for me, either. The recession dug us a hole of about 8 million jobs deep. And we continue to fight headwinds from volatile global markets. So we still have a great deal of work to do to repair the economy and get the American people back to work.
Speaking at Andrews Airforce Base on his way to Charleston, West Virginia for the Senator Byrd’s memorial service, the President also emphasized another key point: the Recovery Act is still in action, and still putting people back to work. The President took the opportunity to announce yet another component of the “Summer of Recovery”:
Fonte: White House