Congresswoman Barbara Lee Responds to July Jobs Report

Washington, D.C. – Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) released the following statement today in response to the Department of Labor’s monthly job report stating that the national unemployment rate had a slight decrease to 9.1 percent in the month of July:

“While I am pleased to see any decrease in the national unemployment rate, there are still 13.9 million people without jobs and 6.2 million of them have been unemployed for longer than 27 weeks.  

“Worse, among communities of color, the numbers continue to be well above the national average with African Americans at 15.9 percent and Latinos at 11.3 percent.

“The Republicans have completely failed to address the true crisis facing our nation: the jobs crisis. While Congress spent time fighting over raising the debt ceiling, millions of Americans were struggling to find their next meal or keep a roof over their head.  The Republican leadership should have brought H.R. 589, the Emergency Unemployment Extension Act of 2011, which would provide emergency aid for those who have exhausted their 99 weeks of unemployment benefits to the Floor for a vote.  Beyond supporting some of our most vulnerable Americans, this would immediately stimulate our economy by allowing these individuals to use the funds on food, housing, and other goods they need to survive.

“We have a moral and economic obligation to create jobs and provide the assistance that jobless workers need in order to survive as we try to fix the broken economy. Now that we have finally put the Republican ‘debt-crisis’behind us, we have got to get to the much-needed work of ending the real crisis in this country – the jobs crisis.”

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