The Labor Department’s announcement that the official unemployment rate declined to 5.7 percent in January confirms that joblessness and job loss are still unacceptably high, long term joblessness is at a critical level, the nation’s manufacturing sector continues to hemorrhage jobs, and wages are flat for those with jobs. Sadly, while American workers struggle to carry the economy forward by increasing productivity, the result is stagnant wages and overall job loss in an America in which the President’s economic policies have failed working families.

In the last two months the American economy lost 14,000 jobs altogether. More than nearly three unemployed workers are competing for each new job, leaving nearly 10 million unemployed people in the country who want to work but cannot find jobs. Long-term joblessness is up – half a million more workers than last year have been unemployed for more than six months. Two years of steady job loss is behind today’s disappointing report by the Department of Labor that our workforce is underutilized by 11 percent.

The manufacturing industry and its workers know what it means to be underutilized. Despite the relentless foreign assault on the U.S. manufacturing industry, neither Congress nor President Bush has made creating manufacturing jobs a priority. The manufacturing industry, which has lost jobs in 52 of the last 57 months, lost another 100,000 jobs in December and January combined. Since April of 1998, more than 2.4 million manufacturing jobs have been lost.

The president has asked for a lot from Americans in these troubled and turbulent times, and workers are working long and hard to turn the economy around. Last year, worker productivity rose 4.7 percent, the biggest jump since 1950. But job losses mounted and workers’ wages were flat.

Instead of recognizing and rewarding the diligence and dedication of workers and their families, the president proposes a budget that shortchanges basic programs and is trying to push through multi-trillion dollar tax breaks that further enrich the already rich, rob states of needed resources and bankrupt the nation.