On the recordOctober 11, 2013
As the House Republicans continue to shut down our Federal Government, I rise to draw attention to the impact it is having on our labor markets and job creation in this country. The House Republican shutdown has prevented even the Bureau of Labor Statistics from releasing the September jobs report, and the Bureau is down to just three employees from its usual number, while the Republican shutdown is, in effect, making it impossible to compile the data for a jobs report for our country. All we know is that our labor market, the number of people applying for unemployment benefits, increased somewhere between 66,000 and 300,000 people. We don't know what the unemployment rate actually is because we don't know how many people are looking for work, and we can't find the data. So we don't know what actually happened completely in September and this month. This is creating needless uncertainty in our markets and makes it harder for businesses to know what is actually happening in our economy. Before the House Republicans shut down the government, what we did know about our labor market was we still had 11 million people looking for work following the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Mr. Speaker, it is time for the Republicans to bring the clean continuing resolution to the floor that has their budget number in it, and let's reopen the government. ____________________
