Harry Reid: “I do not think the President's plan is working for 9 million Americans who are unemployed. I do not think it is working…”

“I do not think the President's plan is working for 9 million Americans who are unemployed. I do not think it is working for 2 million of those people who have been out of work for longer than 6 months. Gaining 126,000 new jobs is certainly better than losing an average of 85,000 jobs a month, which is what the country did for the entire first half of the year, but it does not mean their plan is working, and it does not mean it is getting easier to find a job. In fact, it is not. October job growth does not even keep up with the population growth. October is the best month we have had in a long time in terms of job growth. Even October's job creation does not keep up with the population growth. So that means for the average person who wants a job, it is getting more difficult to land a position, not less difficult. The number of young people entering the workforce is greater than the number of people retiring out of the workforce. The population of people who want to work rises every month, so there must be some level of increase in the number of jobs every month just to keep pace with this growth. Put another way, between the beginning of the Bush recession in March 2001 and last month, the U.S. working age population increased by almost 8 million people. Since March 2001, the U.S. working-age population has grown by 3.4 percent.”