Carolyn Maloney: “The Joint Economic Committee, which I chair, has just issued the latest edition of our series of State-by-State…”

“The Joint Economic Committee, which I chair, has just issued the latest edition of our series of State-by-State snapshots of the economy. It notes that, in June, private sector employment grew in 32 States and the District of Columbia while the unemployment rate declined in 39 States and the District of Columbia. Yet the report also makes clear that our economic recovery is at a crossroads and still faces major challenges, in large part because of the staggering job losses caused by the policies of the prior administration. You can see on this chart how a steady descent into a red valley of severe job loss began in December 2007. The red is the prior administration. The last month that the former President was in office, this country lost 790,000 jobs. The journey back up, under the Obama administration, began in early 2009 and coincided with the passage of the Recovery Act. As you can see, we have been trending in the right direction and gaining jobs these past few months. It's not victory, but it certainly is movement in the right direction. But as our report notes, even if the private sector was currently creating jobs at the rate of 217,000 jobs per month, as occurred during the Clinton administration, the highest sustained rate of job creation in our Nation's history, it will still take over 3 years to recreate the 8.5 million private sector jobs lost during the Great Recession.”