Job Opportunities, Wage Growth, Small Business Expansions
‘We learned last week that second quarter real GDP growth exceeded 4%. That’s the best quarterly growth rate in four years and one of the strongest reports since the Great Recession. Earlier this month, we learned that new claims for unemployment insurance recently reached its lowest level since 1969. And the number of continuing claims, week to week, is lower than it’s been at any point since 1973.’
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding the benefits Americans continue to see from the Republican pro-opportunity, pro-worker agenda:
“We learned last week that second quarter real GDP growth exceeded 4%. That’s the best quarterly growth rate in four years and one of the strongest reports since the Great Recession. Earlier this month, we learned that new claims for unemployment insurance recently reached its lowest level since 1969. And the number of continuing claims, week to week, is lower than it’s been at any point since 1973.
“Let me say that another way. Notwithstanding almost half a century of population growth, fewer Americans are applying for new unemployment benefits today than has ever been the case since just a few months after Apollo 11 landed on the moon. And the last time this few Americans were continuing to receive unemployment week to week, Richard Nixon was president. No wonder analysts are heaping praise on this economy. The Wall Street Journal noted last week that recent reports indicate, quote, ‘underlying strength that could tee up one of the best years in the current expansion.’
“Back in March, my home state of Kentucky joined a list of 14 states that had reached the lowest unemployment rates in recorded history while this united Republican government has been in office. Never before on record had Kentucky’s unemployment rate dropped as low as 4%. Already in 2018, an estimated 14,000 Kentuckians have found jobs -- at businesses of all shapes and sizes.
“Glier’s Meats in Covington announced the company was planning to add new positions and invest in new equipment to meet growing demand. In the words of the company’s president: ‘We had a number of projects that were seen as something we could consider doing down the road. But because of tax reform, it’s possible to reinvest in the plant and in new equipment now.’ In Ashland, Braidy Industries expects to support 1,000 construction jobs as it constructs a new, state-of-the-art manufacturing facility and then 600 permanent jobs. They broke ground in June.
“Not a single one of our colleagues across the aisle voted in support of the historic tax reform that’s helping make these developments possible. So for them, these data are telling an inconvenient truth. But the rest of America is not hiding from these numbers. We’re celebrating them -- and all the life-changing job opportunities, wage growth, and small business expansions that they represent.”
Related Issues: Jobs, Taxes, Tax Reform, Economy, Small Business
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