President Obama focused his weekly White House address on advances his administration has made growing wages and creating jobs over the past eight years rather than on Friday’s new jobs report, which revealed lower-than-expected results.
“We turned a recession into a record streak of job growth, creating more than 15 million new private-sector jobs and cutting the unemployment rate in half,” Obama said Saturday.
September’s jobs report, published Friday, revealed the U.S. economy added 156,00 jobs, but was short nearly 10 percent from the 168,000 new jobs the Bureau of Labor Statistics had predicted would be added. The report is the second-to-last before the November elections.
Underemployment also has not improved since February and is barely down over the last year, according to the bureau.
But Obama said his administration has made progress through the years, including giving those employed a boost in their wages.
“Between 1980 and 2007, real wages barely grew each year. But because the policies we’ve put in place are working, working families are finally seeing their wages and incomes rise, too. Since 2012, wages have grown around 20 times faster than they did over the almost three decades between 1980 and 2007,” Obama touted.
The president said the average American household income rose $2,800 last year and 3.5 million people were lifted out of poverty. Part of the reason for the boosts were changes to minimum wage laws in 18 states and the District of Columbia.
Without mentioning Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who Obama has endorsed as his successor, the president added there are more changes to make to help workers get the benefits, pay and conditions needed.
“Making childcare more affordable, for example. Making sure women earn equal pay for equal work,” Obama said, not mentioning a July 2016 report that the White House still pays women less than men. “Guaranteeing paid family and sick leave. Increasing the federal minimum wage. Preparing workers for the jobs of the future. And closing tax loopholes that benefit just the wealthy and big corporations.”
