[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 20 (Wednesday, February 9, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H558-H559]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

  (Mr. JACKSON of Illinois asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Madam Speaker, the unemployment rate last 
month dropped from 9.4 percent to 9 percent, but only 36,000 jobs were 
created. Wow, 36,000 jobs equals 0.4 percent.
  How did the rate drop so much with only 36,000 new jobs? Madam 
Speaker, it's an illusion. If you are chronically unemployed and have 
given up looking for a job, you don't count as unemployed in America. 
You fall out of the statistics. So as more and more people are out of 
work for longer periods of time, they are literally left out of the 
system. Houdini couldn't have performed an illusion as clever as the 
Bureau of Labor Statistics.
  But shouldn't the government of, for, and by the people care about 
its most vulnerable in this economic climate?
  I want to remind the government of the urgency of our economic 
situation. Send me your resume and your story to 
resumesforA[email protected]. I want to have your story entered 
into the Congressional Record to remind the Congress of the fierce 
urgency of ``now.''
  Madam Speaker, stop the illusions. The American people need jobs, and 
they want to go to work. We have too many Americans who are chronically 
unemployed, and we don't even count them anymore. We need to do 
something about it, and we need to do something about it now.

[[Page H559]]



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