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Address: We Do Better When the Middle Class Does Better
Princeton, Indiana
October 4, 2014
Hi, everybody. I’m at Millennium Steel in Princeton,
Indiana, to have a town hall with workers on National Manufacturing Day. Because in many ways, manufacturing is the
quintessential middle-class job. And
after a decade of losing jobs, American manufacturing is once again adding them
– more than 700,000 over the past four and a half years.
In fact, it’s been a bright spot
as we keep fighting to recover from the great recession. Last month, our businesses added 236,000 new
jobs. The unemployment rate fell to
under six percent for the first time in more than six years. Over the past 55 months, our businesses have
added 10.3 million new jobs. That’s the
longest uninterrupted stretch of private sector job creation in our
history. And we’re on pace to make 2014
the strongest year of job growth since the 1990s.
This progress has been hard, but
it has been steady, and it is real. It
is a direct result of the American people’s drive and determination, and
decisions made by my administration.
During the last decade, people
thought the decline in American manufacturing was inevitable. But we chose to invest in American auto
industry and American workers. And today, an auto industry that was flatlining
six years ago is building and selling new cars at the fastest pace in eight
years. American manufacturing is growing
almost twice as fast as the rest of the economy, with new factories opening
their doors at the fastest pace in decades.
That’s progress we can be proud of.
What’s also true is that too many
families still work too many hours with too little to show for it. And the much longer and profound erosion of
middle-class jobs and incomes isn’t something we’re going to reverse overnight. But there are ideas we should be putting into
place that would grow jobs and wages faster right now. And one of the best would be to raise the
minimum wage.
We’ve actually begun to see some
modest wage growth in recent months. But
most folks still haven’t seen a raise in over a decade. It’s time to stop punishing some of the
hardest-working Americans. It’s time to
raise the minimum wage. It would put
more money in workers’ pockets. It would
help 28 million Americans. Recent
surveys show that a majority of small business owners support a gradual
increase to ten dollars and ten cents an hour.
The folks who keep blocking a minimum wage increase are running out of
excuses. Let’s give America a raise.
Let’s do this – because it would
make our economy stronger, and make sure that growth is shared. Rather than just reading about our recovery
in a headline, more people will feel it in their own lives. And that’s when America does best. We do better when the middle class does
better, and when more Americans have their way to climb into the middle class.
And that’s what drives me every
single day. Thanks, and have a great
weekend. |
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