On the heels of the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s December jobs report, Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions highlighted just how rough Friday’s data release actually is.
While the unemployment rate dropped from 7 percent to 6.7 percent, much of that decline was due to people dropping out of the job market — indeed, as the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee pointed out Friday, for every job the economy added, five people left the workforce.
“Today’s jobs report underscores a deeper problem facing our economy: a large and growing block of people who are chronically jobless and completely outside the workforce,” Sessions said in a statement. “In December, the economy added only 74,000 jobs — not nearly enough to keep up with population growth — and 347,000 left the workforce. That means for every one job added, nearly 5 people left the workforce entirely.”
With a record 91.8 million out of the labor force, Sessions added that the President’s immigration plan will serve to intensify the problem.
“The President’s immigration plan will only make things dramatically worse — and no amount of ‘promise zones’ will be a sufficient remedy for the millions of displaced workers,” he said.
“We must help people move off of welfare, off of unemployment, and into good-paying jobs that can support a family,” Sessions concluded. “More tax, spend, borrow and regulate will only produce more joblessness, dependency and debt. Instead, we need more American energy, streamlined taxes and regulations, a leaner and less wasteful government, better trade and immigration enforcement and a reformed welfare system that helps struggling Americans realize the dream of financial independence.”