Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney On March Unemployment Numbers

For Immediate Release      Contact: Caren Benjamin 202-637-5018

Statement from AFL-CIO President John Sweeney on

March Unemployment Numbers
April 4, 2008

Today’s jobs report is a disaster and we need to take action now.

While the business elite wrings its hands and analyzes what this means for the faceless economy, working people already know.  This report means there are 434,000 more people who had to tell their kids they might have to move and their parents that they can’t help pay for prescriptions anymore.  The ranks of the unemployed have increased by 1.1 million over the past year.  This report is the story of nearly eight million unemployed men and women who have no place to go in the morning except to hunt for jobs that won’t be there.

The picture is particularly bad for African American and Latino workers who have suffered an increase in the unemployment rate over triple that of white workers.  As we remember the Rev. Martin Luther King on this tragic anniversary, we must move forward with his dream of a decent life for all Americans.

Immediately, we have to face the reality that there are no new jobs and that we need to extend unemployment benefits and increase food stamps to keep these families from going under.  We need an immediate halt to foreclosures on subprime mortgages.  And we need to provide fiscal relief to help states avoid the recessionary effect of budget cuts and tax increases.  Then we need to start creating jobs.  This country has miles of crumbling roads to repair, and thousands of schools, bridges and other infrastructure needs to attend to.  It’s time to put America to work.

That’s for the short term.  Long term we need to do no less than a complete turnaround of this country’s economic policy, putting an end to self-destructive trade pacts, lax regulatory regimes and corporate profiteering.