For Immediate Release
February 3, 2012

Contact: Wallace Collins
Phone: 405-427-3366

Oklahoma Democratic Party’s Statement on January Jobs Report

Oklahoma City – Oklahoma Democratic Party Chair released the following statement on the January jobs report showing the economy added private sector jobs for the 23rd straight month and a chart, below, showing where we’ve come from and where we’re going:

“Today’s jobs report showing that the economy added 257,000 jobs in January and unemployment dropping to 8.3% is more confirmation thanks to the vision and swift action President Obama took to address the economic crisis we are moving in the right direction. When the President took office, we were losing more than 700,000 jobs a month. The economy was spiraling out of control, and the economic security of millions of middle-class Americans was vanishing.

“America’s businesses have now added jobs for 23 straight months. In that time, the private sector has added more than 3.7 million jobs, the American auto industry and the more than 1.4 million jobs it supports were saved, and manufacturing is creating jobs for the first time since the 1990s. But the President didn’t just address the immediate crisis and stop there.  He began to lay a foundation for a stronger economy here in Oklahoma and across the country where such a collapse can never happen again.

“This is a make-or-break moment for middle class Oklahomans, and we have a lot more to do if we’re going to continue the trend we’ve seen for the last two years. That’s why the President has outlined a vision for an America built to last.  It’s a blueprint based on American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers and a renewal of the American values that made our nation’s middle class the envy of the world – values like fairness and opportunity.

“Mitt Romney and the Republicans in Washington don’t share this vision. They don’t agree we should invest in our workers, our students or American industries like carmakers and clean energy. They don’t agree that we should be rewarding companies only when they bring jobs back to Oklahoma and states all across the country, not when they send them overseas. And just as baffling, Romney and the Republicans don’t even admit that this reversal and recovery is happening.

“But these numbers don’t lie. We were going down, now we’re going up.  We were bleeding jobs, now we’re creating them.  Our economy was collapsing, now it’s recovering. We have much more work to do, but January’s jobs report undeniably shows that we’re moving in the right direction.”

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