Acting Labor Secy. talks April jobs data and overtime pay rule
April's jobs report data came out Friday morning, revealing an addition of 175,000 jobs added to the US economy below estimates of 240,000. While annual wage growth also slowed, these statistics are only a fraction of the story. The Biden administration has made several efforts to not only help companies create new jobs, but also improve the quality of those jobs for American workers.
Yahoo Finance Reporter Jennifer Schonberger is joined by Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su to discuss the April jobs report and the steps the current administration is taking to aid the American worker, including new legislation to enable accessibility to overtime pay.
Despite cooling job growth data month-over-month, Secretary Su assures April's print is still a "continuation of the strong, steady job growth that we have seen since President Biden came into office."
Secretary Su elaborates on new rules involving overtime pay:
"It's part of the promise of fair day's pay for a hard day's work, and also, historically, it was to make sure that working people didn't have to work too much, too long of hours. Our rule now restores that basic promise. So, when overtime rules were first put into place... some 60% of American workers were eligible for overtime based on threshold. In the last administration, that number dropped to the single digits. So we are restoring this to basically to making sure that millions more Americans who work over 40 hours in a week get the pay that they deserve. They're going to get more money in their pockets, which as we've talked about many times, is good for the economy, it's good for spending, it's good for working families."
Secretary Su also weighs in on the obstacles preventing women from rejoining the US labor market full-time.
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This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino