Kent Conrad: “If we just think in our own lives who do we know who is out of work, and I started thinking about my extended family and…”

“If we just think in our own lives who do we know who is out of work, and I started thinking about my extended family and my close friends, and you start adding up the number of people who are out of work, in my own family there are people who are highly educated, have had really excellent careers who now are approaching 60 years of age, are out of work and finding it extraordinarily difficult to find new work. These are people with advanced degrees who have had very successful careers, and yet, because of outsourcing, because of this job weakness, they are out of work and cannot find new jobs. Not only do we see it in these statistics, but there is another statistic that also tells us something is wrong, and that is the wage growth of production workers is now starting to fall behind inflation. I think that is why people feel under so much pressure. The Senator from California mentioned the number of people who have given up looking for work. Once one gets past a certain point, they are no longer counted as unemployed because they have been unemployed so long they are no longer included in the statistics. Being out of work is not just a statistic; it is not just a number on a page; it is a real person living a real life with a real family who has lost hope, who has lost an opportunity, who has lost a chance. That is why I think there is such growing concern about what is happening.”