On the recordJanuary 21, 2010
I rise tonight for two purposes. One is to talk about the state of our economy, the challenges we face but also the obligations we have to address those challenges, and, secondly, to speak for a couple minutes tonight about our brothers and sisters in Haiti and, in particular, children in Haiti. Let me start with our economy here at home. We got word today in Pennsylvania--this is a newspaper story, an AP story, 3:52 p.m. The headline on this very brief story from the wire services is as follows. I know it cannot be read from that distance. But the headline is: ``Pa. Jobless Rate Up, Jobs at Most Scarce in Decade.'' It says: A new report says that jobs in Pennsylvania were harder to find in December than they have been in more than a decade. It goes on to talk about the unemployment rate jumping up four-tenths of a percent, to 8.9 percent. That is disturbing in a lot of ways. First of all, not just the rate, because sometimes when we look at the unemployment rate, it does not tell the whole story. Sometimes it undercounts the people who are not looking for work, and sometimes the numbers do not make sense. What it means in real terms, in numerical terms, I should say, real people, it means that in Pennsylvania, there are well more than half a million people out of work.
