Today’s employment report is a wake-up call for Americans that more than two-and-a-half years after the official end of the recession, the labor market is still playing catch-up and working families are shouldering the burden. Adequate job growth is long overdue and the quality of jobs being created is falling short of what working men and women need to build a future for themselves and their families.

With a gain of just 32,000 jobs in July — about 200,000 jobs less than what was predicted — and a revised figure of just 78,000 new jobs in June, we are still far from where we need to be. The Bush Administration continues to mislead the public with false pronouncements of a strong job market. In reality, there are 1.1 million fewer jobs than we had when President Bush took office. In the private sector, the situation is even worse. Under President Bush’s watch, we have lost almost two million private sector jobs — including good jobs that have moved overseas as a result of flawed Bush economic policies that benefited corporations at the expense of workers.

But, simply setting our sights on getting back to where we were before the recession would be setting a very low bar for the economy and doing much too little for working families. The poor labor market has discouraged many workers from entering or staying in the labor force. We need to create jobs for these workers — who are not even counted in the official unemployment statistics. If we did that, we would need another 2.5 million jobs today.

Furthermore, we need to be concerned about the kinds of jobs we are creating. Many of the new jobs that have been created since last summer are temporary and low-wage jobs that cannot support America’s working families. So it’s not surprising that many workers have a pessimistic view of the economy because they simply have not benefited from it.

More than half of those who were laid-off over the last three years are earning less in their new jobs than in the jobs they had lost. America’s middle class is being squeezed as never before in this generation as good jobs disappear under the Bush Administration.

Today’s report is more bad news for the eight million unemployed workers and many more who are no longer counted because they exhausted their unemployment benefits. It’s appalling that the Bush Administration and Congress continue to reject measures to extend unemployment benefits.

And now President Bush wants to cut paychecks for up to six million workers with a new overtime rule that will take effect August 23. This is the wrong time to strip overtime protection for workers who depend on that money to make ends meet.

Contact Suzanne Ffolkes 202-637-5018