For Immediate Release: Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Contact: Phoebe Silag or Karen Conner, news@epi.org 202-775-8810

Labor market still needs more than 10 million jobs

The backdrop to President Obama’s State of the Union address tonight is the dire state of the labor market. The jobs deficit left from losses in 2008 and 2009 remains well over 10 million jobs. In December, the addition of 200,000 jobs was heralded as strong growth, but, as today’s Snapshot shows, even at that rate the United States will not return to full employment until 2019. The ongoing crisis in the labor market calls for substantial additional fiscal stimulus to generate jobs and bring the unemployment rate down.

###