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Remarks Prepared for Delivery by
U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao
Fort Bend (Texas) Chamber of Commerce
Washington, D.C.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
So thank you again for inviting me to join you tonight.
As many of you know, every month the Labor Department releases the national employment numbers. And on the first Friday of this month, we released the new employment numbers for March. They confirmed that our economy has gotten off to a great start this year, with a strong first quarter for jobs.
The unemployment rate remains low at 4.7 percent. That's lower than the 5.7 percent average unemployment rate of the 1960s, '70s, '80s and '90s.
211,000 net new jobs were created in March. In fact, 590,000 jobs were added in the first quarter of this year. And 5.2 million net new jobs have been created over the past two-and-a-half years — more than Europe and Japan combined.
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