Friend –
While Americans should be returning to work as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, we instead see the exact opposite. At the end of April, U.S. employers had 9.3 million job openings available – the highest number since the beginning of this recorded data in 2000. Nearly half of small businesses claim they cannot fill open jobs, as the volume of ‘help wanted’ signs continue to surge throughout the country.
This comes as yet another one of Biden’s jobs reports did not meet expectations – the May jobs report was nothing short of disappointing:
- The 559,000 jobs added in May falls short of expectations by 100K
- The United States is still down 7.6 MILLION jobs or 5% from its pre-pandemic levels
- The labor force participation rate was little changed at 61.6% in May
- 20K construction jobs were lost
- 26K food and beverage industry jobs were lost
- Businesses are unable to fill 8.1 MILLION jobs available
- 9.3 MILLION people were unemployed and potentially available to work
- A record-high 48% of small business owners in May reported unfilled job openings. This is the fourth consecutive month of record-high readings for unfilled job openings and is 26 points higher than the 48-year historical reading of 22%.
Unfortunately, President Biden continues to squander the economic recovery he inherited from the Trump administration. We must stop encouraging folks to remain unemployed and start incentivizing Americans to get back to work. I will remain focused on supporting policies that create more jobs and put more money in the pockets of hard-working Virginians.
Sincerely,
Rob
