Rep. Kevin Brady, Chairman of the congressional Joint Economic Committee responded to today’s report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that the economy added 288,000 nonfarm payroll jobs (262,000 in the private sector) during the month of June and that the unemployment rate fell to 6.1%.

“Today’s strong jobs report comes as a welcome relief to Americans on Main Street. Unfortunately, as good as today’s report is, the rate of job growth still isn’t sufficient to eliminate the private sector jobs gap by the time President Obama leaves office,” Brady said. “Even with today’s strong report, this recovery still has a private sector jobs gap of 5.8 million. In total, compared to average this recovery has lost more than 20 million job-years. Just to catch up to the average job growth in other post-1960 recoveries, the economy needs to add 374,000 private sector jobs every month through the end of 2016,” Brady added.

“However, I am deeply concerned by the continuing low level of labor force participation in the Obama economy, especially among those in their prime working years. Compared to pre-recession levels, the only age groups that have increased their labor force participation are those 60 and older. This trend is both unhealthy for the nation’s economic future and unsustainable,” Brady noted.

“The decline in the unemployment rate is largely a mirage created by the decline in labor force participation rates. Without those declines since the President took office, the unemployment rate wouldn’t be near 6%, it would be north of 10%,” Brady concluded.