Representative Kevin Brady (R-TX), Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, commented on today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that the economy created an additional 176,000 private sector jobs in April and that the unemployment rate declined by 0.1 percentage point to 7.5%.

“Today’s jobs report clearly exceeded the expectations of most economic forecasters. Let’s hope this is the beginning of a trend. Even with today’s report this recovery has still produced 4.1 million fewer private sector jobs than the average of other post-World War II recoveries,” Brady said.

Brady continued, “Even the White House admits America’s unemployment rate may not return to its pre-recession level for another decade. Clearly the anemic economic growth of this recovery - particularly the lack of strong business investment in buildings, equipment and software – isn’t sufficient to accelerate private sector job growth.”

Brady cautioned that today’s report “May turn into another false signal that the labor market is improving. We’ve seen this before. I hope what some have referred to as green shoots in the past don’t turn out to be another crop of weeds.”