(TRENTON) — Assembly Budget Committee Vice Chair Gary S. Schaer (D-Passaic) issued a multimedia package Thursday on New Jersey’s December 2012 unemployment rate of 9.6 percent, a rate nearly two full points higher than the national average.
The multimedia package consists of a video of Assemblyman Schaer’s comments and audio and a transcript of same.
The video can be accessed directly via our website — www.assemblydems.com — or by clicking here.
The audio file is available upon request.
A transcript of comments from Assemblyman Schaer is appended below:
Assemblyman Gary S. Schaer (D-Passaic), Assembly Budget Committee Vice Chair:
“The increase in jobs is certainly very, very heartening and we should all be happy about that.
“But we need to keep those numbers in perspective in New Jersey. Number one, many of those jobs, if not most of those jobs were seasonal jobs: people working in retail for Christmas. Unfortunately, not very high paying jobs.
“More importantly, New Jersey’s unemployment rate is still significantly higher than our national rate. It puts us at the bottom of the list in terms of those states that have been able to come back from the recession.
“And we need to be cautious about these numbers, to make sure that we’re not patting ourselves on the back, but rather sitting down and continuing to roll up our sleeves to come out with the kind of legislation that we are in the Assembly majority, to ensure that New Jersey’s economy will come back; come back stronger and faster than it has.”