Washington, DC – According to today’s jobs report, another 11,000 jobs were eliminated in November as the unemployment rate was 10%.  While these data may indicate that the worst of the jobs losses may be behind us, there is little indication that strong job growth is coming soon.  Yet at yesterday’s White House jobs summit, President Obama said “we’ve seen a significant turnaround in the economy overall since the beginning of the year.”  Vice President Biden said, of the 2009 stimulus law, “it has created jobs.”  Outside of the White House, though, real Americans find it difficult to look at the chart below – which compares the unemployment rate the Administration promised if stimulus passed with what actually happened – and see any significant turnaround or real job creation.  Instead, they see only millions more jobs eliminated and millions more unemployed American workers.

“The unemployment rate remains far too high and far too many Americans continue to ask where are the jobs,” said Ways and Means Ranking Member Dave Camp (R-MI).  “The growing concern, echoed by many employers at the White House yesterday, is that the impending tax hikes and spending proposed by this Administration, particularly on health care and climate issues, could cause a double-dip recession.  The fact is our economy remains too fragile and the job-market too weak to impose hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes and trillions of dollars in new federal spending.  The President and his team need to realize that the lack of jobs is the most pressing need facing Americans, and start focusing more attention on getting our economy growing instead of rushing ahead with their political agenda that would only worsen the already bleak unemployment picture.”

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