President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
Hi, everybody. Over the past 52 months, our businesses have created
nearly 10 million new jobs. The unemployment rate has fallen to its
lowest point since 2008. Across lots of areas – energy, manufacturing,
technology – our businesses and workers are leading again. In fact, for
the first time in over a decade, business leaders worldwide have
declared that China is no longer the world’s best place to invest –
America is.
None of this is an accident. It’s thanks to your resilience, resolve,
and hard work that America has recovered faster and come farther than
almost any other advanced country on Earth.
Now we have the opportunity to ensure that this growth is broadly
shared. Our economy grows best not from the top-down, but from the
middle-out. We do better when the middle class does better. So we have
to make sure that we’re not just creating more jobs, but raising
middle-class wages and incomes. We have to make sure our economy works
for every working American.
My opportunity agenda does that. It’s built on creating more jobs,
training more workers, educating all our kids, and making sure your hard
work pays off with higher wages and better benefits.
On Thursday, I traveled to Delaware to highlight how we’re trying to
create more good, middle-class jobs rebuilding America: rebuilding roads
and bridges, ports and airports, high-speed rail and internet.
This week, Vice President Biden will release a report he’s been working
on to reform our job training system into a job-driven training system.
And I’ll visit a community college in L.A. that’s retraining workers
for careers in the fast-growing health care sector. Because every worker
deserves to know that if you lose your job, your country will help you
train for an even better one.
In recent days, both parties in Congress have taken some good steps in
these areas. But we can do so much more for the middle class, and for
folks working to join the middle class. We should raise the minimum
wage so that no one who works full-time has to live in poverty. We
should fight for fair pay and paid family leave. We should pass
commonsense immigration reform that strengthens our borders and our
businesses, and includes a chance for long-time residents to earn their
citizenship.
I want to work with Democrats and Republicans on all of these
priorities. But I will do whatever I can, whenever I can, to help
families like yours. Because nothing's more important to me than you
-- your hopes, your concerns, and making sure this country remains the
place where everyone who works hard can make it if you try. Thanks so
much, and have a great weekend.
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