has been a vocal champion of this effort, and i'm proud to talk about it. through the nra american warrior magazine and the life of duty online network, we're working to make sure our active duty and reserved armed forces, our law enforcement professionals and everyone in uniform who uses a gun to defend freedom gets the gratitude, recognition and honor they've earned. americans need to hear their stories, so we're going to tell 'em. our heros deserve recognition for their deeds, so we're going to see they get it. ..

>> after the meeting ended, adam brown thanked me for what the nra fights for. i mean, here's a guy who was risked everything for his country and he is thanking us for what we do. i have to tell you, it was pretty humbling. last march adam brown and his special ops crew went on a daring raid deep into afghanistan's colmar valley, where no u.s. forces had ever attempted an assault before. they're going after the taliban in the fortified mountain stronghold. after a six-day hike over incredibly rugged and forbidding terrain, they launched their assault, and it went hot incredibly fast. during the fight some of his team got pinned down under enemy fire. but in typical adam fashion, he put his team first.

he charged the taliban position to draw fire away from his team, and fell, wounded. adam has been wounded before, many times, but when his teammates wanted to help them this time, his final words were i'm okay, i'm okay. son believe adam said it because he knew where he was going. but most of the men who were there say it was because he knew how concerned they work for his survival so he tried to reassure them one last time. adam gave his life that day, and his actions saved the lives of his team. who went on to do everyone of the terrorist they were fighting, and complete the mission. [applause] >> that kind of courage, commitment, devotion to a greater good deserve our

recognition and highest respect. all americans, and particularly young people, need to learn about heroes like adam brown. so we are going to tell his story, but for now, please watch this short clip. >> he was one of those guys he knew was going to do something great. >> i had no idea that adam was going to join the marine corps. >> he would tell me, i'm safer than anybody else over here because they have trained me so well, and i only go in and i come out. >> there were times i wouldn't watch the news. i was scared of what i might see or it would make me worry more. >> most of us were born with -- adam was not. he was flat out there was. >> it didn't mind if we had to climb a building, jump out of something, he did it. >> adam always came back. he had so many injuries.

>> he would stand up, shake it off and keep on going. of the men would just be finished. >> his perseverance, he never gave up. >> he was invincible to me. absolutely invisible, despite everything else that had happened. >> nothing knocked him down. nothing. >> when i heard adam brown had been killed in action, i thought about the day i first met him, when he thanked me for all the nra does. and it hit me just how much we owe him and every american who steps into harm's way to keep us safe and free. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in honoring the memory of navy s.e.a.l. chief adam brown, by welcoming his wife kelly and his mom and dad, janet and larry. thank you so much for being with us today.

[applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] >> my fellow nra members, and on and minute of every american who has ever fought for our country,

let's stand in unity against the jackasses, the hypocrites and the liars. let's send a clear message to the obama's, the bluebirds, and every politician who attacks our freedoms for any reason. we will not let you, the united nations, or anyone else redefined our constitution. we will not lose the birthright that defines us as americans. we will not change who we are or what we believe. we will not back down. and by god, we will never ever give up. thank you and god bless this great organization. [applause] [applause] >> and now for the report under president of the national rifle association, ron schmeits.

[applause] >> good morning, pittsburgh. let me hear you. are you proud to be here? [cheers and applause] >> are you proud of your nra? >> yes. >> and are you proud to defend our freedom? >> yes. >> you know, i know you are. it's our freedom that unites us. and i share your pride, and thank you, for that warm welcome. to me personally, this day means a lot. as my term of president of your nra inspires -- expires on monday, i cannot help but reflect on the past two years, two wonderful years my wife and i have enjoyed. it's been an incredible experience. you know, i'm often asked was the best part of being president of the nra. and that's easy. it is you, it's the members,

across the country, from alaska to florida, from california to upper new york. i'm blessed to have met so many great people. men and women who shoot and hunt, raise good families, love their country, and do everything they can to preserve our values and freedom. i've seen your commitments to our association, your love of family and nation, and your fight for our cause. it's been a real joy to meet so many of our members from so many parts of our country. and everywhere i've been, i've had a true and simple message, to protect our freedom, participate in it, get out and shoot. and to preserve the second

amendment for our children and grandchildren. we must encourage them to participate in the second amendment to shoot and hunt, to follow in our footsteps and fall in love, as we have, with the shooting sports. think about it. wouldn't it be great if all of our mayors and governors were shooters? wouldn't the second amendment be safer if every congressman was a hunter? then at least they would all know what they were talking about, and they would all know what they are voting on. that's not the case today. but it could be the reality of tomorrow. our schools and colleges are filled today with leaders of america's future. and if we care about the future

of the second amendment, we must care about those kids in school. yeah, that's right. i'm talking about kids and guns. i'm sure the media is going to love that. you know, when the news media talks about kids and guns, they make celebrities out of mass killers. that's what sells their tabloid journalism, and selling is what they care about. but we are not buying it. because turning killers into celebrities is wrong. and the media ought to be ashamed. what they ought to do is send a camera crew over to reading, pennsylvania. i did. and i found it very different, incredible reality about kids and guns. take a look at what our nra news

crew discovered in reading, at wilson high school. please watch. >> you start at the bottom. >> would you believe that some of the coaches in the school said this was not a sports? >> in its first season the rifle team at wilson high turned a way room into a shooting range. it was just secondhand air rifles, they were determined to prove those coaches wrong. >> they are not quit his. >> were the only team to these kinds of rifles. the other teams have precision rifles. we start at a disadvantage. >> i would say well over 90% never ever touched a rifle, any type of firearm. >> my mom was shocked. she said i never pictured you doing this. >> i do track him and then we have a town hardest. >> is for everybody. some of them have talents they never knew before. >> they are interested in her students becoming leaders, not

only within the school community but the world community at lar large. >> leaders who make a difference just like a coach who decide to give up a to in afghanistan for an assignment back him. >> i was looking for something meaningful, worthwhile to make a difference. my son is the one who pushed me over the edge. he said, dad, do you think you could change history in afghanistan or do you think you can do the future? i think the things they are learning with us are the values, talk about loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage. those values make you think about yourself and you will learn more about yourself i think in this sport than in any other sport. >> total concentration. >> i like the individual and it takes a lot of discipline. >> discipline, dedication and teamwork that earned them the sportsman of the year award. >> we may not have won matches but we have won the respect of their peers as well as our

community, which to me was more important than any match. >> we will able to do so much in so little time with what we had. >> next year we're going to kick butt. i really believe that this is a lie future, the enthusiasm, that the students have, maturity that they have, the whole new generation of hunters. i see this generation as being a generation that would not stand for someone who would take that right away from them. [applause] [applause] >> these were students who have never before fired a gun, and never before anticipate in a school sport. they are learning, teamwork, sportsmanship, self-awareness.

and most in high school is learning what we all know to be true. that shooting is important to america's future. ladies and gentlemen, wendell me, and some of his young shooters are with us today. colonel, please stand up with your team and let us welcome and congratulate you. [applause] [applause] >> colonel and team members, thank you for being here, and good shooting. you know, studies have shown the law-abiding young people who

shoot have lower rates of delinquency and drug use than those who don't. it's common sense when you think about it. lessons of discipline, safety, a responsibility for self and others are all part of learning to shoot. those are also lessons of life and leadership. that's why wilson high school shooting team deserves nra's full support and why we need teams in high schools all across the country. decedent must be planted in our communities today -- the seeds must be planted for the future of tomorrow. leaders like the members of the type i dealt the. that's one of the 50 fraternities over at penn state. they have a frat house and a pledge process. they sponsor, charity drives,

and parties. just like any other fraternity on campus. but this one is different. it's a fraternity of diehard hunters. the frat house is complete with a knee full of readers -- a freezer full of venison, duck. it is also the only professional and social fraternity in the united states. two weeks ago the fraternity held a reunion. ernie sat down with some of the guys who started it. please watch this video. >> bearhug is a military campaign and a family reunion all wrapped up in one. >> it's deathly the, roddy, the history of the place. we feel like we are a band of brothers. >> it's almost like a badge of

honor. >> you wind up with bruises, scratches, broken guns. >> you get battle scars. like most men, you are proud of them spent and i think the fact we keep it going year after year after year your. >> the fraternity was out in 1922. it was a forestry club at penn state. >> you learn a lot from. it's not just about harvesting and animal. it's about nature. >> it was turned into a career. >> a lot of the guys from the house, when we were young, we just knew that's what we wanted to do. that's what we wanted to be. >> i work for the pennsylvania fish and boat commission. >> it's a network of people hiring of the brothers. will have state and official wildlife agencies all over the country, forest service. that's our main focus is bringing and entities young people. >> but is it getting harder to recruit young kids to get involved in? >> oh, yes. we had a very low number of

brothers this year at the fraternity house struggle. it's essential to get young people involved. >> we had a first time hundred was 14 years old. to see a young hunter at home and get on facebook and tell all his buddies about the bearhug. that's what it's all about. >> the kid who shot the bear when he was 14, that will be a memory for him the rest of his life. that's what we're up against because the antistatic ton of money and a ton of backing. >> if you get first timers out there hunting and get them hooked on it, that's another in our aid supporter. -- another nra supporter. >> ladies and gentlemen, these guys are doing at penn state, critical in the future of hunting of america. the alumni stacks the roster of conservation agencies and nonprofits across the country.

they work in just about every pennsylvania resource agency, the u.s. fish and wildlife service, the national park service, rocky mount elk foundation, and the national rifle association. they deserve our full support to expand their fraternity to colleges, campuses, all across the nation. responsible shooting makes it better kids. you know, it makes better teammates, it makes better students. shooting and hunting fosters better leaders and better managers of natural resources. shooting makes america better. and as 60 minutes found out, it makes us safer because it makes better soldiers. please watch. >> last month was the most lethal for america yet in afghanistan and most of the americans were killed by the deadliest weapon in the enemies

are so, the roadside bomb, or ied. an improvised explosive device. ied still more than 40 american and coalition forces in october alone up from five, two years ago. in response the u.s. military has gone on the offensive, surgeon destroys nations are carried out across afghanistan bby a small army of elite units called -- only volunteers are allowed to serve on those teams because the nation is so dangerous. >> in world war ii and korea, artillery and shrapnel killed more american troops than any other weapon. in vietnam it was full arms fire. here in afghanistan it is the roadside bomb that has cost more than 75% of the deaths of american and coalition forces. we were in eastern afghanistan, cosponsor walking distance to the pakistan border where many of the bomb makers are trained. >> you guys know the threat, a

lot of stuff going on. >> the squad was working with the michigan national guard unit to clear bombs from roads in the area. it's called route clearance patrol, and there are 35 of them in afghanistan. the pentagon plans on sending 13 more this winter. specials christopher parsons has been a guardsman for three years. >> i love the pressure. it puts a lot of pressure on me to make sure i do my job correctly. >> what skill does it take to do your job? >> i'm from michigan so i love to hunt. that helps a lot respect to whether it is hunting deer or in michigan are hunting ids in afghanistan, same skill set? >> roger. >> one of his commanding officers told us the hunters make the best bomb hunters. with his sharp vision he was able to find one with the trigger smaller than his index finger. it was a closed-end. >> thirty meters away you move that was paid? >> about 10 or 15 k. first when i saw i thought it was a tripwire right away.

so i started looking more and i saw the water. >> thanks to guardsman parsons, the bomb was destroyed. >> and that 60 minutes -- [applause] >> you know, you heard wayne lapierre a few minutes ago say something that the media just won't admit. quote, and in the end, good guys with guns makes america safer and better, period. that's what mr. lapierre said a few minutes ago. so keep that. and good kids with guns on high school shooting teams, or hunting friends, or on foreign soil defending our freedom, those good kids with guns will keep america safe and free long after we're gone. that's why everywhere, as my role as your president has taken

me, i've done my best to urge nra members and gun owners to do two simple things. it out and shoot, take along a young person. if it is true that shooters and hunters make better americans, then it's also true that one way to build better leaders for the future is by taking a young person shooting and hunting. it's just that simple. and when it comes to preserving our freedom, it's just that true. you know, pittsburgh is a beautiful place. i had a chance to visit point state park the other day. there where three rivers meet a great city was forged. not unlike our great nation, forged from its own three rivers of freedom. life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. the promise of america has

always been the promise of pursuit. to live free to chase our own dreams. as americans, we were born with the heart of the hunter. it's our ability to pursue our own course, to do what we will that defends and defines our liberty. our individual freedom lives in the second amendment. our freedom to keep and bear arms. and it's the bearing of arms, law-abiding americans, at the range, in competition, in the field. it is by shooting and hunting that our heritage and rights that our nation is preserved. my heart is full of gratitude for the honor of serving as the 60th president of the national rifle association. i could never be more proud -- i

could never be more proud of the nra than i am today. i leave the stage with a promise. i care about the future of america, and i know you do, too. so i ask you to join me in a solemn vow. when this convention and, i promise to do a very simple, very important and fun thing. i'm going into the field. i'm taking a young person with me. we are going to shoot and hunt together. and i'm asking you to join me in the same promise. take a young person shooting, and let's build a bright future from the second amendment, and for america. let's preserve our heritage. let's defend our freedom. let's defend our liberty. and let's make sure that america always remains the land of the

free. together, let's make it happen. let's go shooting. god bless you, and thank you. [applause] >> and barack obama we have a president who is more opposed to gun ownership than any in our history. and who still believes he will prevail. he has used every excuse to seek support for gun control measures. his team at the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms is harassing dealers. and disable the united nations and his administration may look favorably on a tree that would weaken or get our second amendment. and most importantly, he is fairly drooling at the prospect of another supreme court vacancy.

so that he can appoint someone who will empower liberals on the court to rewrite the constitution and the constitution and bill of rights without a second amendment. make no mistake about it, barack obama, his minions and the justice department, his allies in the congress, and his friends in the media would take our guns if they could, and they will if they can. it's because of you and what you do every day as the voice of the people determined to be free, that they haven't and they can't. at least not now. the question though is whether we would move as strong and five, 10 or 20 years as we are today. president ronald reagan himself a proud nra member, once worn that freedom is always and

everywhere, but a generation away from extinction. with that in mind it's up to us, not just to fight and win the battles of today, as jim mcclure and harold voelker won those in the '70s and '80s, but to prepare for the next generation for battles yet to come. we can do that by recruiting young people, women, and those serving in the military, to our cause and to our family. young people like my daughter who served, who joined the army after 9/11 and served two tours in iraq, and is now a proud nra member. you can help by getting other young people who might otherwise lose themselves in the latest video and computer games to hide, to shoot, and to understand the importance of firearms in the second amendment to a free people. that's as important a part of our mission today as any. because without an army of

millions who share our values, and are as willing as we do fight for them, we could lose everything in a generation. is why the nra is launch the life of duty campaign, to honor the heroes who defend and maintain our freedoms. they are ignored, marginalized, and taken for granted by politicians and the media, but not by the nra. that's why the nra spends an extraordinary amount of time working with the boy scouts, girl scouts, 4-h clubs, and kids everywhere to get them involved in the shooting sports and to make the members of our extended family. it's why nearly 90% of the funds raised through the more than 1000 friends of the nra dinner sponsored every year goes to youth education and training. and it's why we are always looking for new recruits. is to succeed him if this part of our mission succeeds, then i am convinced that it will, we

will continue to win. the nra of tomorrow will be able to look to politicians and the next generation in the eye as we look up to those today in the eye and say, you might if you could, but we are here to warn you, that you can't. and to give you some serious career advice, don't even try. thank you very much. [applause] >> economic news was mixed today with unemployment rising to 9%, up from 8.8% in march. remarks now on the jobless rate from bureau of labor statistics commission keith hall. is testifying discord on the new unemployment numbers to the joint economic committee on capitol hill today. a committee is chaired by pennsylvania democratic senator bob casey is on your screen.

live coverage from the dirksen senate office building on capitol hill. >> [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> the committee will come to order. i want to thank everyone for being here, and i have an opening statement i will make him and then returned to our vice chair, congressman brady, and the other members who want to make a statement before introducing commissioner hall for his statement. we are again please have commissioner hall here come his team here with us today. and we appreciate your service to the country. we have a lot to report on today, but i wanted, before we get into the numbers for this month, i just wanted to add a few words about some of the trends we have been seeing over the last couple of months. by the labor market is still facing significant challenges, we know that unemployment is too high, and over all employment

well below the levels prior to the recession. we have seen some real strengthening in the labor markets since the spring of 2010. and more private sector jobs have been created and the unemployment rate has begun to come down, though it kicked up this month and will get that -- to do in a moment. if we look at the last 14 months, we have now recorded over those 14 months private sector job gains, internet time we have added to .1 million private sector jobs. since the beginning of 2000 of the labor market is also shown resilience in the face of rapidly rising oil and gas prices. continued weakness in housing, slowing, export growth in winter blizzards that delayed some investment in hiring. against these challenges the trend has been clear. in eight of the last nine

months, the economy has added more than 100,000 private sector jobs during each month. in february, march and now april, we've added more than 200,000 private sector jobs each month. and i think that's a very good seri syed, a very good trend. so we're moving in the right direction. we're benefiting in my judgment on the actions taken in the last two years of 2009 and 2010 in dealing with this challenge. these actions that we've taken have put us on the path to growth, and i'm pleased to see some signs of that this month as well. today's economic -- today's employment report i should say, provides further evidence that the labor market is getting healthier as the economy continues to improve and the

recovery continues. during april, the economy added 268,000 private sector jobs. due to the loss of government jobs overall, the economy added 244,000 jobs in april. one of the charts behind me clearly shows the trend in employment over the past 18 -- i'm sorry, the past 14 months, a sign that some of the work that we have done in the last 18 months or so has begun to have an impact. one sector that has been showing sustained employment growth is the manufacturing sector, a key source of good paying jobs and central to our nation's long-term competitiveness. in april, this sector added 29,000 jobs, and since the end of 2009, manufacturing has added a quarter of a million jobs. in addition, the professional business sector added 51,000

jobs, its ninth consecutive monthly gain. as we know from the news this morning and we'll hear more about this, obviously in hearing, the unemployment rate has aged up to 9.0, from 8.8 in march, while down from its peak of 10.1% in october of 2009. the unemployment rate remains too high. with 13 points 7 million americans looking for work, we can't find it. as chairman of this committee, i monitor these unemployment numbers for each demographic group to ensure that its overall employment, the overall employment rate continues to drop. the unemployment rate falls for every group. but enforcement that's not the case that the unemployment rate for this month for workers with a disability just by way of one example, workers with a disability, their unemployment rate was 14.5%, compared to 15.2% a year ago.

the high rate of unemployment among people with disabilities underscores the need for legislation that i and others have worked on. i will be created using along with congressman crenshaw of the florida the achieving a better life experience act, the so-called a ble, able actor in the previous congress this legislation had substantial bipartisan support in both chambers. the a.b.l.e. act will give individual with disabilities and other families access to new highly flexible tax-free savings accounts that could be used to help cover a variety of essential expenses for people with disabilities, including employment training, and educational expenses. in combination with other support, the a.b.l.e. act can help people with disabilities gain new skills and training and strengthen their employment prospects. additionally, when we look at the cato demographic groups, the

unemployment rate for veterans was seven points 7%, which is below the overall 9.0 rate. gulf era veterans meaning those who have served in iraq and afghanistan facing unemployment rate of 10.9%. so obviously higher than both the overall federal rate, higher than the overall unemployment rate. the unemployment rate in the african-american community was 16.1%. well above, above its pre-recession level. that number for african-americans was as low as 7.7% in august of '07. hispanic workers, the unemployment rate was 11.8, which is much higher than it was in 2007. so we've got to examine these numbers as well as the overall rate. so in summary, the unemployment

rate shows that we are on the right track. the economy is continuing its recovery. the economy is stronger than a year ago. more people are working. fewer unemployed, but we must do more to continue down the path of this recovery. the first quarter, the first quarter of gdp, the data show the recovery is modest and the recent spike in oil and gas prices continued weakness in the housing market present real challenges. federal reserve chairman bernanke and others have noted that the weather and other factors contribute to the slow down in the rate of economic growth in the first quarter. while they have said that, it's important that congress tackles issues that will protect american workers and families, now and into the future. i believe we need to stop subsidizing the major oil and gas companies at a time when the price of oil have spiked, and the profits have surged.

we have this strange situation where they get our tax money, they are getting record profits, and the gas prices for families go through the roof. i think we must crack down on the unfair trade practices that china engages in on a daily basis, and we need to put our fiscal house in order. cutting spending, reducing waste, fraud, and abuse, and bringing down the deficit and especially long-term debt. so the job before us is to build upon the progress of today to creating more jobs and bringing the unemployment rate down, but i look forward to working with members of the committee on these and other challenges to support the economic recoveries come and now i'd like to turn to our vice chair, congressman gr greg. >> thank you, chairman. dr. hall, we welcome you and your colleagues again this one. during april, initial unemployment claims surged from 395,000 for the first week, the

474,000 for the last week in april. the last time that initial claims were this i was october of last year. this development is extremely unsettling as we've been expecting continued improvement in the labor market. while the job growth is welcome, today's employment report coming on the heels of these troubling initial claims data is showing some disconcerting sign. 9% unemployment and a rising number of number of workers who recently lost their jobs are disappointed statistics. we need is still faster private sector job creation, or otherwise millions of u.s. workers will language in unemployment, millions more will remain under employed or live in fear of losing their jobs. the economist recently asked question, what's wrong with america's economy. in answering his question, an economist put it to america's public finance in this labor market.

moreover, they say the recent decline in the unemployment rate is misleading because it's a result of surprisingly small growth in the workforce as discouraged workers drop a. the labor force participation rate remained at the lowest level in more than a quarter century. it's frustrating beyond words to see the excruciatingly slow progress in employment growth. especially why president obama pursues policies that obstruct economic activity and job creation. the energy manufacturing services industry in america is a prime example. under this administration, the energy manufacturing and energy services industry is suffering from the fact of the drilling moratorium on offshore and. threats of actors tax changes that will shift jobs in production overseas. we should be content with pouring over these employment numbers month after month, and bemoaning the slow progress.

perhaps we can blame it on the weather or china or on american energy, but we know what is causing this growth problem, so let's fix it. let me sure you again as it did at last month's hearing, the table job performance during and after this recession compared with a during and after the other two major postwar recession. this chart demonstrates how we are underperforming relative to past experience. this is an exceptionally weak recovery. there is no excuse for the dismal job performance. you cannot expire placing the financial crisis caused severe recessions, but then failed to encourage private sector growth by every means possible. why doesn't the president have an obsession with raising taxes quick wide as he pursues with his green jobs mantra when the 1% of our energy sector for which wind and solar account clearly cannot revive america's job market. americans are demanding real solutions. jdc republicans released one page from the summer and another

from the fall last year that warned treating the bp oil spill as an environmental disaster be a mistake about it on the second paper came out in october the price of crude oil hedges risen to $80 per barrel. these papers explain the importance of continued exploration department in the fastest growth areas for oil production in the country to help counteract future oil price volatility's. in 2010 the united states with the largest source of world supply growth outside opec on the strength of offshore production, but they should the energy information administration expects federal gulf of mexico oil production to fall by 240,000 barrels each and every day. energy consulting firm estimates the drop of 375,000 barrels per day in 2011 or the production because new development wells could not be brought online. if those bills are important, how does that help stabilize oil

price? how does that help our economy? how does that help our jobseekers? the price of august '01 hundred dollars per barrel, of average price of gasoline nationwide is just shy of $4 per gallon. the private sector is boosting labor productivity their first quarter productivity was up by 1.6%. however, businesses are also sitting on $2 trillion of cash that they won't invest because of regulatory uncertainty and fear of higher taxes and inflation. therefore, businesses are not creating new jobs necessary to we employ more people, and increase the nation's output sufficiently to generate enough tax revenue, to support those who are sick, retired or remain unemployed at the annual rate of real gdp growth slowed to 1.8% in the first quarter. president obama's put the federal reserve in a position where he feels compelled to hold the federal funds rate at zero,

why hundreds of billions of dollars worth of treasury bonds. the joint economic committee republicans just released a paper on this subject as well titled too loose for too long. the federal reserve is taking great risks with inflation, would not be necessary if the other levels -- levers of the private economy that the government can impact were set to go. dr. hall, i look forward to your testimony. >> thank you. congressman cummings. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank you for calling this a today to enable us to examine the current state of the plug-in or nation that i also think a witness, dr. hall, for appearing before us today, and for following up with my office return my question from last month's hearing. we learn from today's report, mr. chairman, in april the private sector added 268,000 jobs resulting in an increase in nonfarm payrolls of 244,000

jobs. these numbers are heartening because they follow 13 consecutive months of positive job creation. in fact, 1.8 million new jobs have been created since februa february 2010. when contrasted to an earlier period, january 2008 through february 2010, a period during which our economy shed 8.8 million jobs come it is clear that we have averted a disaster. nonetheless, other indicators clearly show that we must continue to make job growth our top economic policy priority. we learned yesterday new claims for unemployment unexpectedly rose to an eight-month high of 474,000 applications. there are curly 13.7 million americans who are unemployed. almost a third of these

individuals have been unable to find work for more than one year. one out of every 10 americans without a college diploma cannot find work. and one out of every six african-american workers remain unemployed. equally worrisome was the report monday by "the wall street journal" indicating that there are currently 5.5 million long-term unemployed americans who are no longer receiving any employment benefits. these are our fellow americans, and they are fighting for survival. on april 18 i held my annual job fair, which, in baltimore, which connects employers with job seekers, and thousands of people attended. i saw firsthand the determination and humility of my constituents who are so basic and opportunity to provide for themselves and for their families. they are resilient but they need

a chance to succeed. that is why i commend congressman, democratic colleagues, for earlier this week unveiled a continuation of our make it in america agenda. this agenda consists of numerous bills that will support job creation today, and in the future by encouraging investment and innovation, infrastructure and education, right here at home in america. unfortunately, i fear that my friends across the aisle are sacrificing our future in an effort to pay off debts created by tax breaks in two wars. nobel peace -- nobel prize-winning economist joseph stiglitz wrote in politico last month, and i quote, the ballooning of the deficit is understandably move deficit reduction back to the center of the debate. but the best way to reduce the deficit is to put america back to work, and, of course. yes, instead of making these critical investments, the house

majorities budget proposed this last updated programs, headstart and pell grants for college students. this week the house majority voted to pass h.r. 1214, which would repeal the section of the affordable care act and funds for construction and improvement of school-based health centers. funded the construction of the centers not only ensures children access to these vital and cost effective services, it creates jobs in one of the hardest hit sectors of the economy, construction. the majority proposed cuts with a school-based health centers, or job training programs, are ostensibly defending with the argument that tough times require tough choices and sacrifices. unfortunately, the senseless cuts fail to meaningful reduce the debt and is different hundreds of thousands of jobs and the well being of our fellow americans. this is not the time for symbolism. this is the time for smart choices that will create jobs, and once again, make our nation

in the land of opportunity for all americans. i urge the house majority work across the aisle to find solutions that will reduce the deficit, help the middle class and put americans back to work. i thank you for the sharing and i yield back. >> thank you, congressman cummings. dr. burgess? >> thank you, mr. chairman. dr. hall, commissioner hall, always good to see. always good to start the month off with commissioner hall. i do want to talk about why the u.s. economy is not recovered in some of the steps we can take to bring the economy back. i'd like to should offer as an example the state with mr. brady lives and where i live, texas, as a good example of the direction where we would like should head to the rate in texas is a .1%, certainly below the national average. certainly much higher than we would like you to be in the state of texas, but nevertheless

the texas economy has performed better than any other state because of, why? a job from the radar machine, no state income taxes, and the fact that texas is a right to work state. as of march annual job growth in texas was 3.6% compared with u.s. growth job rate of 2%. the dallas offense has unemployment rate in texas would be even lower except for the fact that texas has had a rabbit population increase in the last 10 years, of which we are all aware. we also accounted for 14% of the united states employment growth over the last year or the agreeable weather in texas, better job conditions are attracting people from all over the country, and people are voting with their feet and moving to the lone star state. over 200,000 jobs were created in the last year. other states could achieve this growth by duplicating texas' job from the environ.

in spite of the statistics our economy in texas is not perfect. we are concerned about unemployment rates for our young, people just getting out, beginning their earning years. and put rights for minorities are unacceptably high, and the overall unemployment rate is still as i said over 8% and that is-texas. but the statistics cited earlier in the shade compared to the rest of the country something in texas is working, and perhaps washington and other states could consider a more job friendly regulatory regime in order to restore those jobs that mr. cummings says we need in order to recover the economy. one sector of the economy which i would like to focus is the housing market, housing prices have continued to drop in demand for homes remains low. the housing market which helps drive our economy is in there that they can create jungle do we need to boost our recovery. i'd like your dr. hall today to discuss the housing market

strike on the economy and how that affects our national growth. another a of concern already mentioned by other people is high commodity prices to consumers across the country face higher oil and food prices. if we don't want to economic revival to stall, these prices have to come to. the goodies yesterday is that oil prices tend to come under $100 of their for the first time in a long time. in fact, it was rather a significant draw. what happened yesterday? oh, the house passed a bill. here we are innocent today and i would just mention to the senate that our bill yesterday to expedite lease sales in the gulf of mexico, those very places that have been delayed or canceled by the administration in the past year, the fact that we're willing to expedite those leases, lease sales had a profound effect on those people who like to speculate and hedge in the oil market. they saw the republican house was serious about addressing the issue of the subplot of our oil

produced within our shores. the administration has harmed offshore exploration of the past year. i don't think there's any question about that. we've seen the effect by the price at the pump. what will not create jobs is the debt, and the federal debt at $14.3 trillion, the number has grown so large that most people simply can't comprehend it. they have given up even trying. canada's debt to put it in perspective is about half a billion dollars, half a trillion dollars. the federal government must find ways to operate like a normal family. we'll hear about cuts that need to be me. one of the first things we probably need to do is cut up the government credit card and stop spending. the talk in washington has been about cutting spending, and there are cuts that need to be made but there are other things we could be doing here in congress to cut down on government expenses which are things like waste, which in turn free up resources for congress to reduce the deficit and help

those americans who are out of work. let me just comment briefly and i will submit the rest of my comments for the record, but mr. cummings mentioned h.r. 1214 the past history. this was a bill that would take back $100 billion, i believe erroneously included as a forward appropriation, a blank check, if you will, a blank post dated check that was included in the affordable care act. affordable care act is riddled with this type of policy where the federal government has written blank checks posted them, put an envelope and all of them are overdrawn the american account. yes, this was about to the small sum of money, $100 million. but here's the do. this money was for the construction of clinics. the money set in stature. the money could not be used to hire a doctor or nurse or anyone else to provide care in that clinic. that's crazy. the american people recognize that's great.

even the administration recognize that it was crazy because this is the only one of the so-called cut bills in the affordable care act with the administration has refused to issue a veto threat as a statement of administration policy. even the president was embarrassed by slipping this $100 million into the affordable care act. i assume it was done over here in the senate for some reason as a payoff to someone. i can't identify who or how our why, but that's the way most of these things were. but it was appropriate to bring this money back. we are not against school-based clinics. we are against the funding of a clinic with no vision for funding for stepping that clinic. the normal federal qualified health centers statute says we will not build a. you build it, we will help you staff it. this legislation to turn things on its head. as appropriate to reverse that course. i thank the chairman for his indulgent and i will yield back the cost of a time and submit the bows of my statement for the record. >> dr. keith hall is the

commissioner of labor statistics for the u.s. department of labor, the bls is an independent national statistical agency that collects, processes, analyzes, disseminates essential statistical data to the american public, the u.s. congress, other federal agencies, state and local governments, business and labor dr. hall as absurd as a chief economist for the white house council of economic advisers for two years under president george w. bush. prior to that he was chief economist for the u.s. department of commerce. dr. hall also spent 10 years at the u.s. international trade commission. he received his ba from university of virginia and his ph.d and m.s. degrees from purdue university. doctor, thanks again for being here. we are grateful to have your testimony. >> mr. chairman, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the employment unemployment data we released this morning. nonfarm payroll employment increased by 244,000 in april,

and the output rate edged up to 9.0%. over the last three months payroll employment has risen by an average of 233,000 compared with an average of 104,000 in the prior three months. in april, employment increased in several service providing industries, manufacturing and mining. retail trade added 57,000 jobs in april. this increase followed too much in which retail employment changed a little. over the month job gains occurred in electronics and appliance stores, building and garden supply stores, and automobile dealerships. employment increase in general merchandise stores offset a decline of similar size in march. employment in professional business services rose by 51,000 in april. since the low point in september 2009 employment in this industry has increased by 745,000. several component industry continue to add jobs in april

including technical consulting services, computer systems and design services. employment in temporary help services was essentially unchanged in april. employment in leisure and hospitality grew by 46,000 over the month. ..

>> since a recent low in october of 2009, mining employment has risen by 107,000. other goods construction climate was unchanged over the month. it's shown little movement since early 2010 after falling sharply in the prior three years. employment in state and local government continue to turn down in april losing jobs since the second half of 2008. turning now to measures of the survey of households, jobless rate edged up in april. the rate was 0.8% lower than in april of last year. there was 13.7 unemployed persons and the number of people unemployed for less than five weeks increased by 142,000 in april. the 27 weeks and over declined by 283,000 to 5.8 million. other households indicators show

little to no change over the month. the labor change participation rate is 62.4% since january. the employment to population ratio changed little at 58.4% in april. despite changes in late 2009, the ratio showed little movement. the number of individuals was at 6.8 million. enrollment rose by 32,000 in april and edged up to 9%. my colleagues and i would now be glad to answer any questions. >> thank you very much. i wanted to start with the private sector numbers. those inerms fortunately have been going up in the last several months. i wanted to ask you just by way of review. the number for this month, the month of april we're looking at,

is an increase of private sector jobs of 265,000? 268,000, i'm sorry. >> yes. >> can you give me the numbers for january, february, and march? >> sure will. the last three months it's averaged 253,000. >> but the average for the first three months of the year? >> the last three months. >> the last three months, okay. >> in the particular months before were, total private was 231,000 in march and 261,000 in february. >> okay. and in particular, i was just wondering if you could comment by way of your analysis on just sectors in the private -- the particular sectors within the private sector overall. what are the sectors you seeing recovering most rapidly, and

where are there areas still of weakness? >> sure. the sectors showing the quickest recovery are professional and business services. we added 584,000 jobs since the labor market trough. education and health has added a little over half a million jobs. leisure and hospitality added 290,000 jobs, and manufacturing added 244,000 jobs. still struggling, financial activities actually has continued to lose jobs losing 42,000 jobs since february of 2010 and construction held pretty flat losing 9,000 jobs. the biggest declining industry is not in the private sector, but it's government. >> uh-huh. >> government's actually dropped about 391,000 jobs since june of 2009 since the recession ended. >> june of 2009. all the other numbers refer that same period? >> there was the sense the labor

market trough, february 2010. i changed times on you a liability there. >> okay. we know these months, the two surveys, the household and payroll surveys, show numbers that are in conflict. just wanted to have you review that. the payroll survey shows strong growth in just overall job creation about 200,000, but the household survey shows that there were 200,000 fewer workers employed. is that typical to kind of have conflicting stories from those two surveys during a recovery? >> yeah, it's certainly not a-typical. we get some slightly mixed signals, and the main reason is they are different surveys. there's some variation between the surveys. i do find that over three months they do tend to become into

alignment. month by month they can give a mixed signal. >> give us 30 seconds on the difference of the two surveys? >> sure. when we talk about payroll jobs, we're actually talking about a very large survey where we survey business establishments, how many people are on your payrolls. we take advantage of the unemployment insurance program because they look at the records. that's a very, very large survey, and it in fact represents 4 million people. that's 4 million out of 130 million payroll jobs so that's -- that's what makes it that a fairly accurate number, and when we say we gained 244,000 jobs, we're looking at that survey. >> [inaudible] >> with the household survey, that's actually a tornado telephone survey designed to give you unemployment rate, it's

not designed to give you a number of employed. for example, when the household survey, you said it showed a drop of 200,000 jobs -- >> right. >> the uncertainty in that is 400,000 jobs. we're talking plus or minus 400,000 jobs when we say minus 200,000. we gain 200,000 or gained 600,000. >> i don't want to create a direct general sigh, but it's more like polling in a sense? you got a margin of error there? >> right. it's really designed to give you the focus on the accuracy of the unemployment rate itself. for example, typically the uncertainty in the unemployment rate is two tenths of a percent. it's fairly accurate for that, but not so accurate for the levels. >> okay. just so people clear who are

watching, the household survey leads to the percentage unemployment rate that we pay attention to? >> yes, that's correct. >> thank you very much. vice chair brady? >> thank you, chairman dr. hall. every month of new job growth is welcome, but this a weak recovery especially given the trillions of dollars thrown at the economy by the white house and federal reserve, and i always note that here we are after having spent all of that federal stimulus money, and we actually have 1.8 million fewer americans working than before when all that money was spent. as for this month, usually a small jump in unemployment rate signals people moving back into the work force that can be a good thing, but the rise in jobless claims and the jump the workers recently laid off are not signs of a healthy economy

or healthy recovery. the number of unemployed who lost jobs recently increased by 242,000. this jump comes on the heels of large increases in initial unemployment claims, 474,000 which we have not seen it that high since last summer. shouldn't we be watching these statistics very carefully going forward? >> yeah, i would say absolutely. the payroll job growth is, at least the last three months, has been accelerated so that's a good sign, but we have not yet seen things we would like to see in a strengthening recovery. >> the initial jobs claim, that was a big jump. we had four weeks in a row of increasing jobless claims. that's not expected in a healthy

recovery, and those who just lost their jobs recently, could these data be pointing to a weakening job market? normally it ought to be going the other direction. >> right. i would say that the number of new unemployment claims is in fact -- is in fact a helpful data, and that is a -- that rise is not a good signal. >> yeah. do you -- what do you think is happening here? >> you know, it's hard to say. >> the numbers seem to be all over the map frankly. >> right. yeah, you know, i think while focusing on one month's data is important, you have to look back at the trend and sort of see how the trend goes. sometimes maybe at points like this you need to wait and see how the data looks over the next month or two to see if that signals anything.

>> yeah, well, we've been watching over the last two years and seeing recovery much slower than 81 and 82. we have an estimated $2 trillion of capital sitting on the sideline, businesses tell us they just are reluctant to invest it in new jobs, equipment, new structures, new buildings until they see more certainty coming out of washington. i did notice -- i always appreciate the data you gave. i did notice there was increases in leisure and hospitality this last month, but that you attributed in your marks, two two-thirds of it were related to drinking places and food service, so is the bar industry doing better these days, and is that -- i'm being facetious, but there is a jump in drinking places?

>> yeah, that was responsible for most of the growth in leisure and hospitality. >> i'm teasing. i'm trying to look -- we're all looking for the optimistic signs, and we see some private sector job growth that i think seems to be a good sign, but the longer term recovery which is to get more people into the work force because right now, we are at the lowest number of workers participating in the economy in a quarter of a century so even as we look at the unemployment rate, look for hopeful signs, truth is very few people are participating or at least a lot of people are not participating in this work force, again, troubling signs as we go forward. we'll continue to watch month to month, but this really is -- we're seeing disconcerning signs. i yield back. >> dr. burgess?

>> thank you. dr. hall, just so i can be sure of it, i'm clear, in your prepared testimony you talked about gains in the mining sector, and that includes oil and gas exploration and extraction? >> yes, it does. >> and does that include both offshore and on shore? >> yes. >> now, just looking at the table a14 under the household data, under that line item of mining, coring, gas, and oil and gas extraction, the unemployment rate a year ago 9.4%, april 2011, 3.5% which gives that one of the lowest unemployment rates. in fact, it rivals government

workers for its low unemployment right; is that correct? >> yes. >> the -- is there a way -- i guess what's confusing me is on your testimony you said unemployment in mining increase the 11% in april. i'm assuming we're talking about oil and gas exploration and extraction in that 11,000? >> yes, that's part of it, yes. >> but, of course, we also know that because of federal policies, we've put a lot of pressure on the actual mining mining like coal mining so have -- do those two things tend to offset each other? >> well, actually this particular month both oil and gas extraction except oil and gas added jobs this month.

oil and gas added 2,000 jobs. mining except oil and gas added about 2700. >> let me ask you this, do we know, what is the total universe of people employed in these industries? >> well, mining together is about 720,000 people. >> but that includes offshore and on shore exploration? >> oil and gas extraction is 170,000 and mining otherwise is about 210,000. >> on the previous table, 813, construction and extraction occupations are lumped together. this is the employed and unemployed persons occupation not seasonally adjusted. >> yes. >> can we break those out for

which -- because obviously construction, i mean, when i look at table a14 the unemployment rate for construction in april of this year is 17.8%, almost 18% so that is the highest unemployment rate in the current jobs report is in the construction industry, and yet on able a13 it's construction and extraction are added together so like the total employed in april 2011 is 7042, but we know the greatest unemployment -- the highest unemployment rate is in the construction industry. how might to interpret that, how am i to break that down? sort of like the total universe of people on which these construction numbers and the mining numbers are based. >> sure. well, we don't have it in this release, but we can probably break this out a bit finer for

you if you'd like. >> well, i think that's helpful. we, on the policymaking side, you heard some of it referenced this morning where some people are talking about significantly increasing taxes on the oil and gas industry. i don't know, maybe that's true, maybe it's not. we do seem to give a lot a way to the so-called green jobs sector. where are the green jobs on this? >> at the moment, the green -- well, first of all, depends on how you define green jobs. >> i don't know, i just hear it. that's for you smart people. >> we will at some point be measuring green jobs. we are pulling the green jobs out of the industry because there are industries that specialize in green products that are sort of spread out throughout, and the big challenge for us is separating them from the rest of the industries. >> right. of course, these are industries

that receive huge subsidies of the stimulus bill and various other things that we've done, the cash for talkers, and i say we euphemistically, but things congress has done if the last few years. is there any way for us to get a sense on what our return on investment has been for those big -- what people call green jobs and other people call green pork? is there any way to get an idea of return on investment there? we're talking about raising the anti on the drilling sector. i don't know, maybe that's a good thing. let's see data on that, but we should be supplied return on investment data for what has happened with the federal plus-up of these other industries. >> yeah, i certainly think with the data as it is now, one might

be able to get into that to get a feel for that. that's not something we would normally do, but our data probably would educate you somewhat on that as it is right now. once we get our green job projects, pulling out the green jobs, you can get a better idea of that, but that's a ways off. >> when can we expect that? >> i don't know. we're going to start collecting data next year on it, and so the problem is going to be, of course, once you start collecting data, you don't know the baseline. you don't know -- but we'll have some idea starting next year with the number of people employed in these industries. >> the uncertainty principle, the mere fact you are looking at something means you can't be certain? >> well, actually we worked hard on getting a deaf -- definition that makes since. >> very well. that will be helpful on the policy side because we ask big

questions and will be great to know what the return has been on the federal investment on this activity. not complaining about it because texas has a great number of wind farms we didn't have 20 years ago, but it would be nice to know what kind of return on investment did we get from those expenditures. thank you, i yield back. >> the treasury department reported the united states is expected to hit its debt ceiling on may 16th. congressional reportly reported in anticipation of hitting the debt ceiling, today treasury stops issues state and local governments serious treasure securities that help states and local governments fund infrastructure and other projects. i find this deeply concerning because we already have seen thousands of layoffs taking place at the state and local level. you said there's a significant decrease in government jobs; is that right? >> that's correct. >> dr. hall, can you give us

further detail for the committee, the current job situation throughout the state and local governments across the country, and can you offer any predictions regarding the impact of that treasury action may have on the state and local government's employment levels? >> sure. well, i can tell you in terms of government employment, the government job loss has been centered primarily in local government jobs, so for example, local government, since the end of the recession continued to lose jobs something at the order of 370,000 jobs, which is a pretty high number, and there's the bulk of the government job loss since the end of the recession losing 791,000 -- 391,000, so that's not a

significant number of employers. >> does your research go into whether women are disproportion ally effected with the government jobs? in other words, a high number of women who are employed by government? >> yes, i don't have it in front of me, but i think we should be able to get you an idea of that. i would think especially in the local government. >> the -- you know, i netsed that the african-american -- noticed that the african-american workers increaseed; is that right? >> yes, it did. >> what were those figures? >> okay, sure. the african-american unemployment rate went from 15.5% to 16.1% this month, an increase of six tenths of a percent. >> do you consider that

significant? >> it's not statistically significant. it's not a really large sample, so statistical significance is somewhere around 1.2 to 1.4 percentage points. >> you were answering congressman brady's question, you said we have to, and you said this in the past, is that we can't take just one snapshot of a month. we have to look at a trend and where we are, so how do you see this, this month's numbers fitting into the trend, and did you see -- does anything here cause you to have any significant concerns that we may be going in the wrong direction? >> i would say in terms of trends, let me just say that the

the -- what jumps out to me is there's three months of payroll job growth, about a quarter a million a month in private sector. >> is that significant? >> yes, that's significant, and i also think it's important in that you need about over a long time period, you need 130,000 jobs a month to employee new people in the job force. we are getting well above the 130,000 per month jobs you need so this last three months looks to be an acceleration of the job growth. >> now, we're about to have many of our young people graduating from college, and how do you see that impacting? in other words, when we have this month of may and june where people are coming out of high

school, coming out of college looking for jobs, how does that affect your numbers during that course? in other words, is there a big pump up -- bump up in demands and therefore affects the numbers? there's been the trend i guess i'm asking you. >> you know, i think one of the things most concerning say over the past year has been the labor force not growing much. the labor force has been very flat which means we haven't had the normal entry into the labor force on net that we normally get, and -- >> some of those people are, i guess some of the young people are staying in school longer? >> yes, that's right. >> and then we lose people that just stop looking for work? >> that's right. i would consider it to be a another face of the recovery when we start to get an increase in the labor force and people get optimistic enough and start to reenter the labor force and

we get growth. it has been concerning we haven't seen much growth in the labor force yet. >> my two questions i always ask you if the president for to ask you, commissioner hall, you know, i mean, where do we go from here? what does it look like? what would you say to the president? >> you know, the good news from the report is what appears to be an acceleration in the job payroll growth. i think kind of what i just mentioned. i think the thing that we would look forward to hopefully like we'd like to see going guard is the payroll job growth to continue and maybe accelerate and give us enough confidence that we actually see the labor force start to grow and i think that would be, like i said, i think that's sort of the next phase in the recovery. >> the next question i ask for people watching this and trying to find a job, what advice would

you give them based on geography, areas of growth, people maybe trying to go back to school to retrain, i mean, what -- based on what we have here, what would you tell them? >> well, you know, obviously, i wouldn't -- i wouldn't guide myself by monthly report because this changes over time. >> let's talk about trends, the trends you see. >> sure. the trends are we continue to see growth in the service provider sector in particular. that sector historically is more recession proof than other sectors. this recession is deep and bad enough that it really has lost jobs, but as a general rule, that sector does better than other sectors, and, you know, within that there's lots of occupations likely to have

strong growth over the next 10 years. >> like health? >> health care to financial examiners to computer software engineers, a number of things like that. >> right. thank you very much, mr. chairman. >> moving to a second round, doctor. the chart is up, sorry, i wanted to go through the chart for a second. what's striking about this chart is it obviously depicts private payroll starting with the month of january of 2008 and it goes through this report that we're looking at now, april of 2011. what's stunning about that chart obviously is you got over, you got over the course of the last year, the month by month number, last year one administration into the other, but for a long,

long period of time you have negative numbers on private sector job growth. obviously starting, and i want to make sure i'm reading this right, my staff can correct me. when we go into positive territory, it's what month? >> i believe it was march. >> march of? >> march of 2010. >> 2010, okay. is there any way that you can -- i don't know if you have the number calculated or if you can get it to us, the total growth -- the total private sector job growth of that date from march of 2010 through april 2011 -- >> 2.9 million. >> jobs created since march of 2010 through this month? >> yes. >> okay. i thought that was significant, and i never thought of it in terms of it over that court of time. ..

>> our common denominator in terms of what type of work or what challenges they face. that's question one. question to is, is there any significance they face of that decline or is that more of, more of a standard number we have been seeing?

>> sure. first of all, the very large number of long-term unemployed, the rise has been very broad. so almost all demographic groups, almost all industries have had a big rise in the long-term unemployed. but there's an over representation in that, for example, for those with less than a high school diploma, they are very much over represented. the unemployment rate is like a six-point deficit of the long-term unemployed for those without a high school diploma. those who were either never married or widowed, divorced or separated they are over represented in the long-term unemployed. and in industries, construction stands out as having a very large, larger than expected share of the long-term unemployed. that never going to a little bit is not uncommon, but the thing that is tricky about that is, people can drop out of being

long-term unemployed by just leaving the labor force or by getting a job. the way it is looking right now, to be believe labor force for everyone to get a job out of the long-term unemployed, 27 weeks or longer. >> one of the most compelling pieces of data you just cited is that that refers to education levels. so in other words, if you have a high school diploma or less, i'm just trying to put a number on that. in terms of the likely you being not just unemployed, not being part of the long-term unemploy unemployed. >> you're probably, you are three times more likely to be long-term unemployed than someone with a college degree. >> thank you. dr. burgess, do you have anymore? >> thank you, dr. hall.

if i correctly interpreted your answer to mr. cummings questions about geographically and which sector of the economy, if someone was really serious about getting a job right now, they would move to texas and practice medicine, is that right? >> if you have that option, it's not a bad what. >> let me ask another question. we deal with nonfarm payroll, is that correct? but there's going to be in effect from what is happening in the central part of this country, kind of gets, kind of get obscured and headlines of all the other news, but there is a huge issue with flying of the farmland in central part of the estate, boarding the mississippi river. do you have an idea how that is going to affect things? as we see missouri, arkansas, memphis, tennessee. they said water is up to the sidewalks. what sort of effect will that have or is that just built into

sort of baked in the process, baked into the cake where we can have a tough agricultural year? >> first of all, we don't collect data on farm employment. the department of agriculture does, i believe. they pay a fair amount of attention to data on employment on farm so i'm probably not the right one to ask. >> if those jobs are not there during the growing season, certainly may not be in the fields are underwater, then that will push people into looking for work in other sectors, is that correct? there's bound to be a ripple effect, no pun intended? >> what would happen is it would not come probably not shot in our papal jobs numbers, it could well show up in our unemployment numbers. accounts are two different surveys and the coverage is like a different. with the unemployment rate, we are making phone calls and that will catch some of those jobs with a phone calls, but with a payroll jobs, we're only talking talking to nonfarm establishments that pay payroll

taxes basically. >> again, it's an enormous tragedy and a story that is sort of not, below the radar screen for most americans. i'm told by people who live there, it's a flood of the proportions of 1927, 1928, when fully 1% of the usable housing stock in the united states of america ended up under water. it's a similar sort of circumstance today. so i can't help but feel that's good to have a profound effect on whatever fragile recovery we're experiencing now. this is going to take a toll. do you have a sense as have the actual size of the labor force itself, the behavior of that, during what has been this very prolonged recession, i mean, it seems like the number of the sort of total side of the labor force is smaller today than what we used to talk about. >> that's right. the labor force participation rate literally gives you some

idea. and the labor force participation rate is at a very low level. so i think statistics that were up there a minute ago, it's the lowest level since the '80s at some point your so that is a concern. >> we talk about all the trouble having with the deficit and what have you come and need to get people back to the workforce and paying taxes. it's going to be harder to do that, isn't it? >> yes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i will yield back the balance of my time. >> yankee doctor. commissioner, we're going to let you go in imola. one question i want to ask earlier with regard to japan, and, in fact, that that is having on our economy. i know it's not an easy question to answer, but both of the tsunami and earthquake, and whether or not there's an impact, some indication or at

least probably speculation is probably a better word, that they could be an impact may be in our manufacturing. i guess told that yesterday's unemployment insurance claims data showed that 1700 employees who filed claims after being laid off from auto manufacturers in ohio. any data that suggests that that could be related to what's happening in japan? and then secondarily, more broadly, is any data that indicates a broader impact from what's happened in japan's? >> sure. as i understand it, there have been some very short-term plant closings related to this, like when they are et cetera. and since the workers were employed most of the time, just having one day plant closing doesn't show up as a payroll job loss.

it will lower our hours worked a little bit, but not really affect the payroll jobs. yet, my expectation would be if it's going to have an impact on the payroll jobs, in particular, that would likely start next month and we will get, see what we can see in the employment numbers in the automobile plants next month to see if there's maybe and affect happy. >> okay. doctor four, we are grateful to have you here again. this hearing is adjourned. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> of next a discussion about innovation and the use of new media tools and public broadcasting. this is part of an event hosted by the journalism school at the university of missouri. it's just over an hour. >> we are, as you see, have a vast array of people to discuss the subject. and they have been told that i will call on each of them for a three minute description of what it is that they are doing that is an innovation in the digital realm. and then once we have had that first round, i have a few questions, depending on what the time is, i will ask either one

or two questions. i may ask no questions come and go to your questions in the audience so you have a chance to get your ideas across. and we have extended our time for our c-span audience. we are extended until 12:15. that is one hour and 10 minutes from now. we have enough time and we had a fascinating discussion. let me begin by introducing everyone by name, and then i'll come back and start the discussion. this is linda winslow and hari sreenivasan from pdf newsletter. dick meyer from national public radio. janet saidi from kpi in columbia, missouri. laura van straaten from wnet in new york. jacquie jones from the black programming consortium. i messed it up. i need to say it right. jessica clark from a center for

social media. mark stencel from npr. linda fantin from american public media and minnesota public radio. and kay summers and and elahe izadi from wamu. with that we'll get started started and linda, you are going kashmir we talked a bit in earlier session about how traditional pbs and npr and local stations are going into the digital platforms. and we learned that you change the name of the news hour at the beginning of 2010 or so tell us what's behind that and what the thinking is. >> perfect. levy just make sure this is on. is it working? okay. i think in sort of alluded to the purpose of changing the name without coming out and saying so. but the pbs "newshour" was part of his vision when he articulated this morning that if we're going to survive, we in public media, the translation a

decision basically is go forth and collaborate. in a world of striking resources we're going to have to learn how to share them and make common bond with like-minded partners, people are interested in preserving and protecting serious journalism. so, part of the point of taking his name off the program, which by the way i happen to think is a revolutionary action on the part of any iconic newsman. i cannot think of anybody else who ever did that. i think jim deserves a lot of credit for something that was long thought out on his part. his message in doing that was that pbs and the newshour have a common purpose. and we should have a common brand, one that takes advantage of both of our brands and makes a stronger one out of the two of them. and taking his name of the program was the most dramatic

way he knew to cigna to the audience that this is not your grandfather's newshour anymore. we're doing business differently. and we are all this together. that's the message. as tom other two, there may be a downside to that in the short term if no one recognizes the name without, the program without his name on. however, we act we see see evidence that this all is working it in the last couple of months our audience in february was up 11% over february of 2010. and in march of this year it was up 16% over march of 2010. so, the point of the exercise we think it's slowly sinking in and people are watching it, for whatever the reason. in part because our mission hasn't changed. we are still delivering series journalism and with more partners now than ever.

i'm happy to say a very long list of national collaborators, including nova, npr. to talk about a couple of our own experiences there. american expense, nightly business report. and when i say there's collaborators, he's just our promos like stay tuned, although we don't mind doing that either on occasion when there's a project coming up later in the evening that we know our colleagues put a lot of time and energy into. because we are trying to say, look, we're at the beginning of the evening on pbs and we represent the first entry point and we want you to stay with us. we want you to see us all as one family. and, therefore, the projects that we've done in collaboration with others have been designed to make that point i should state that what i am most proud of now, i was going to yield to time, but i'm out of time, other projects we've been doing collaborative on the local

level. that's where hari comes in. used guy who teaches us all have to make the most of our digital platform. i think he's probably taught a lot of people in this room the same thing. >> how do i get out of this powerpoint thing? singh and the digital guy that i am. [laughter] >> i don't do powerpoint. [inaudible] >> essentially, when jim brought me on, he endowed it with his normal -- enormous budget of $0. and he said go forth and collaborate. so what we want to try to show you right now in three minutes is how we're using the digital platforms to try to increase the number of voices in public media, how we are using digital technology to try to take the content that you were committees already exist.

and what we think are some interesting experience in the interest of storytelling come in three minutes. which was leaders basically, you will see budget we talked about the immigration debate on an individual from tucson arizona's local journalism center as was in san diego, the border reported there. here we talk to somebody in springfield, missouri, boise, idaho, virginia. they look like standard tee shot. but it costs me $0 because they essentially take themselves and while we had a speakerphone conversation and they sent it back to using the internet. there was a satellite costs involved. so let's see don't have a stupid how about these two bloggers from the article network. this is from cape cod massachusetts and portland, oregon. the record themselves on the mac books like the one i have, the senate back to me and ready video conversation. we also did this, totally free thanks to ftp and into. we also tried to do this with our local station partners in louisiana public broadcasting.

in the gulf oil spill, we also use youtube's moderator to try to get people to give the suggestion of what their suggestions for this bill are. about 15,000 people submitted 75 their suggestions, 100,000 votes later, what do we do those ideas could we turn into a story, we put on the broadcast newshour. ray suarez had questions for bob dudley, the ceo of bp, that he crowd sourced, thanks to you to the moderator, -- youtube moderate. and let's say, i'd of shifting gears. i know i have two minutes. this is jim lehrer on the iphone. but not his iphone. [laughter] but our content is there that our content is there for people were there ever they want, whenever they want it. this is "the pbs newshour" on youtube. this is us on facebook. i don't know why screen is sort

of stretched out. this is us on twitter. those are kind of the usual suspects but we are also find there are these interesting new communities that are popping up. for example, we are streaming are broadcast on used in everyday underlying legal stations to embed that so we hope people come to their station and got on the website for 30 minutes or an hour. we're not trying to cannibalize our friends. this is the newshour. this is us on shore for. this is us on frequency.com. this is us on, this is a widget we bill. now and shifting gears to the third part which is charset stop. i'm going with this. i've got the mic. [laughter] this is a really interesting what you read that last year. we found the power of this is perfect. people stuck it somewhere 6000 different pages across the internet so we decided to do this to time track like if there were delays in airports around the country. in real-time you can check any

one of the 52 major airports. last things giving when the threats. here's another example that we are trying. we are generating content whether it is youtube or twitter or images, very simple and free application that we can try for that. finally, i think the coolest thing if i could leave you with this is something we did with the mozilla foundation. this is called universal subtitles but basically we took the entire state of the union address, and it is for free, crowd sourced captions, and if you scroll down here, it is in all of these different languages. german, esperanto is a little tough, but i think that's a 1%. estonia, finnish, spanish, part french, here's the coolest one. it's in chinese simplified. okay? just by the activist crowd sourcing, just trying to get into spanish and chinese alone means that it is now accessible

to a couple of billion more people on earth. and would discredit dennis for abc, nbc or cbs? i would have done this for public media that they believe in? i think this is part of the tool that i think it's part of the exist but i know i took more of my time. [applause] >> thank you, hari. let me just pause for a moment of moderate prerogative, and say, and ask you a little bit about your metrics. what's happened to your web traffic that you can tell us? [inaudible] >> i have no idea, you know more than idea about the numbers. >> i think, you know, for us last year we knew we're going to have us down here over your number so we really, when we saw 50%, 60% growth realize, find,

compare to the newshour of two years ago. this year what we are surprised about is on a month by month over month basis were still averaging significant growth. we're up on the number, the length of time people spend on our site. were up on the number of stories they click. up on the type of engagement whether through facebook or twitter. people are coming, standing, engaging far more than they ever did. >> great, thank you. next will go to dick meyer as national public radio. you're going to talk about some the things that npr is doing to partner specifically with local stations. and some of the other editorial initiatives. >> i will try to do with the jim lehrer bus call. said she took so much of npr's time. [laughter] [inaudible] >> what i wanted it is just tick off a couple of very high level principles that guide our long-term strategic thinking and

attitude decision makings at npr on the national level, but which we try to sort of inculcate into our conversations that we have when thinking about how we can help stations or collaborate with stations or really more to the point, extend the reach of public radio dualism on every level. and i think the most important is sort of a paradigm shift where we very much try to think of ourselves as part of a network, network that includes all public we to stations and and network that reaches from the kind of hyper local blogging new journalism that can exist, all the way up to our reporters in foreign countries. into the degree that stories, information assets can be shared openly and freely throughout the system, it's a network. and that means stations airing stories with us and with other stations, every level that you think of a network, we try to get our people to think about

the world in that way. that is a change. the other driving principle is reporting. it's very simple but it's often ignored. the decision that npr has made flies in the face of all commercial broadcast journalism which is to maximize boots on the ground, to maximize reporting, not commentary, not arguing, not aggregation even. every spare shekel we have we want to put in the service of reporting, and we want to help stations do that too because we think, and they think, that's the way to become important to their communities. in guiding some of those important decisions we look very hard at areas where commercial media has retreated, where they are not investing, where they're pulling the resources and where we believe there is still strong information demand, news, consuming public.

the final thing that we try to inculcate into all our conversation at both the national and local levels is the gospel of partnerships. and we have become, someone put two big and earlier, permission is in or partnerships. and some our experiments and they've been very successful, particularly with propublica, some of the non-profit investigators. we have tried to be helpful to stations that are interested in the same thing. three specific programs that i would talk to you about, what is called the impact of government, and it's a symbol as simple as simple can be. we're trying to put two reporters in every state capital in the country. one primary digital, one primary broadcast to our vision is to be in 50 states and these reports will serve insource out publicly to stations, not individual stations. so the partner aspect is there. and it's an area where

commercial journalism is retreating with custer like force on a state of reporting. another area is investigative reporting where i work at the national level we are always looking for ways to share their reporting with stations and give them the tools they need to report on those stories. and, finally, because it says stop, and i obey, is -- [laughter] is a project we have had to train local stations in more sophisticated economics reporting. and that was run out of our los angeles bureau. and it's something we're looking to replicate again and again and again. >> thank you. [applause] >> yes, applause. and one of the projects, partnership projects that npr has embarked on this project argot. and i'm not going to ask kay summers from wamu to explain your both in project argot.

and then introduce your college is actually doing it. thank you. >> we at wamu met in april 2009 with mckinsey was a from npr and representatives from 11 other public precisions across the country discussed the possibility of a pilot project that would increase the capacity of publicly to stations to build a reputation an online audience. in selected areas of the article covers but i'm going from the proposal. the plan was npr digital would provide an editorial template, does an account platform and local stations will determine the subject of the coverage. the site launched in two ways in july and august. hours launched in august 20. our topic was originally conceived as an examination of the intersection of race, religion and culture in our area. it evolves, prelaunch to be a blog about racing class in the district that we live in. we decided our blog would examine a topic that in forms all of our reporting, due to the

nature our newsroom would not assign a reporter to. it is a part of many stories that you hear on wamu but clearly it's a standalone story. perfect example, the five part series on childhood obesity that you usually hear all this week. it's a much bigger story than racing class. but is that story informed. as i said, the plan was each blog would be staffed by one blogger, and given our topic we elected on a blogger who was experienced in writing about race or she was a cofounder of the blog focus cultural interest blog for the south asian diaspora. she brings a lot of passion and a keen interest, personal interest, really personal interest in observing the way that race and class the fact that everything plays out in our city. she ran the blog which you can see it here, so we'll for about six months at the evolution has coincide with our own growth of

our digital effort and we brought him or an online managing editor from the print world to the our editorial oversight for all of our text and video. he saw the very quickly for a broader approach to our blog and one person's voice and observations. so we have realized that purely observational style of eye ecb bows by bounced by a more traditional approach to journalism, particularly with the topic by consensus which has so much data that has to be digested. so to that income in march we hired an experienced online journals who joined here today. i'm so glad she's a good she came to us from a blog network that was also somewhat of an experiment. and i would love for her to talk about how we're utilizing a dual approach and have it's going out a lot and they've also compare and contrast how it is to block the commercial media, blogging for public media. >> hi. yeah, i was telling katie

earlier that quite quickly i was quite quickly to discern the difference between public media and the corporate world because now i'm finding out that i'm able to take my time a little more and really delve into such a nuanced topic, where as you do want to provide original reporting as impactful and that readers want to read and that is really just, sorry. sorry, yeah, so actually had a couple other slight. i don't know if we can pull the other guys going to talk about two in particular. the private world you really have this pressure on you to also produce a massive amount of content. that is going to generate as many viewers as possible. you do want many viewers on your site here as well, but another primary concern is what role you played in the community and how you argued by the community.

and you do have that -- i did have that but you also have this external pressure constant to pump information onto the blog. so we were able to take two different approaches to the same story. so i posted about the fluidity of race for latino americans. and that's able to draw up on a couple of original sources, some studies that were done and make some connections. and then after this post, we are able to kind of talk about her own personal view and how it impacted her life. and also she drew from external resources as well, but provide a more personal narrative to the same story. and both pose received many, a lot of comments, a lot of re-tweet, allowed facebook post. but they represent two different approaches that may also reach two different audiences. and both of those audiences are engaged, we should be trying to reach both.

also, the issue of race and class as kay was saying is very difficult for a reporter on a newspaper or tv station to just devote their time to. it's very nuanced, and reporters, beat reporters often consumed with setting the story. and doing the original reporting which is very fact that viable and important. but because it is so nuanced and because it deals a lot with context, there is a space in traditional media to devote a lot of time to do. so the blogging platform really i believe lends itself to the. you control multiple sources but you can do original reporting. i was able to embed the audio of that interview. i was able to draw up on the original quote from the "washington post" story that kind of led to the discussion. that a doctor expert on my own and put that all into the post. i was able to draw home some of the other bloggers and reporters were saying about his comments that we have to start. is the way to stop.

but one of the question that was raised by blogger at "the atlantic" was, well, no one has talked about why this is inherently bad for black people. so was able to talk to this expert about that. and i don't believe that you can really find out at a traditional newspaper website. they just have too many pressures to produce a lot of content. that will generate news. okay, thank you. >> a round of applause. [applause] >> another one of these national, local collaborations is something funded by the corporation for public broadcasting called the local journalism centers. and from vatan rather dry name have evolved i think 13 or 14 different regional collaborations. janet saidi from tbi a on the campus of the university of missouri in columbia, is here to talk about the one that her

station is involved in. and that's called harvest public media. >> yes. harvest public media is a much better name than a local journalism centers, but we are excited to be one of nine local -- i think is one of seven local journalism centers scattered throughout the nation. when we talk of harvest public media, three kind of keyword come up. the first one is collaboration cash vouchers share the three what would you do and try to keep it to three minutes. so collaboration, words i've heard a lot today come is basically what harvest public media is. it's for reporters across four to five states. we get taxes and they're a bit as well. nebraska, iowa, missouri and kansas. and it for public we're station. that means news directors, general managers, all coming together and collaborating on what we hope to be the go to place nationally for agriculture

journalism. harvest public media we came about through this vision of kansas city radio station. frank morse was reported in some of you will know how he felt. my sense is he was reported that felt the weight of untold and reported stories on his beat which was agriculture. so, we got together with harvest public media and his vision kind of brought them together to get this grant from cpb into a tiger by the untold stories that were making up the fabric of our region and putting them out there to the world. that's exactly one of our reporters and/or multimedia editor described it in my newsroom yesterday. the fabric of the stories that are in our region. one of those reporters actually tackled a story from missouri's bhutto but if you look at the map of missouri, this is a good day to talk about missouri, we have a poodle kind of like italy. -- a poodle kind of like italy.

jessica was given the lecture and the time and equipment and the money to go down to the bhutto and talk about african-american farmers that filled a country church in that region and told their stories about how they were waiting for reclamation's as a result of years of discrimination. she told a story. and changed her life. we hope she went back and changed of other people have heard that story. i've only got one more and i've got one as i will skip innovation, another key were. not only are we all going to get together and be on the same page, not always that easy, to move forward with covering the untold stories of agriculture and all of the many people, the voices that make up those stories, but we're going to do it across platforms. we're going to meet our audiences at different places through twitter, through online, through blogging. there's a great fieldnotes blog that's been put together. so we're innovating.

the cpp gives the laguna on to get together but to get equipment, send reporters out not only with great audio equipment but with great cameras and to learn how to work them. third word, momentum. when we found a topic like this with frank morse's vision and every coming together, and reporters, for reporters, it's a lot of motivation to tell the stories in the region. a lot of people got behind that. so been looking at the missouri school of journalism we have across the quad investigative reporters and editors who help us put an investigative lens of some of our reporting, help us go digital and go right into the future with the way we met our audiences. so just by going across the quad were able to see the. that's the momentum that was brought to get on this topic. a fourth what a weapon to use but i do today is today is promiscuity. [laughter] that for all the other alphabet soup is made up where we are at the missouri school of journalism help us to gather the momentum to help us a success.

join our conversation. >> thank you. [applause] >> now we are going to keep it coming keep the focus on local, and turn to a representative from dubya ned, laura van straaten, who is starting in the biggest media capital of our country, is starting a local news enterprise. so laura, tell us why this is something wnet is taking on and what your plans are. >> i will but i want to say what's great about unity journalism is we are not agricultural journalism. it's extreme different. we are new york. it's incredible news down. we have dozens of newspapers and hundreds of hyper local sites and blogs and community organizations and nonprofits that generate their own content

across all platforms. and i think that because of the nature of new york, a key part of our role, and i might be a little bit wrote here and say that comment is i think it is generation. i think it is pulling from the excellent work being done by local bloggers, by some of the issue, often wonky sites that focus on very, very specific policy issues. so even with a layer of duration, even with duration there is a layer of the public media sensibility where we can pull from the excellent work being done by others but sort of at a patina of our own opinion and important wraps and sort of bring different voices together and just by way of example, there are blogs just on the ferries can largest on the bike lanes, blogs just on dozens and dozens of blogs just on the

dance offerings in new york city. so we have almost too much choice. and what we can do best in public and i think in a lot of ways is to create partnerships, amplified the excellent content that is being produced, specifically by nonprofit and community organizations. and really bring that to a more mainstream audience. and when we do bring that to a more mainstream audience i think a key part of that is mental focus will from the get go be a multiplatform enterprise. so we launched first on the web sometime this summer. the plan is to become a daily half hour local news and culture show. probably buy into this industry, but not rushing to air because it's critical that those kind of partnerships that we want to form have a chance to grow and blossom first online. it is possible that we may even

have our app up before we see a broadcast. so from the get-go, we plan to be multiplatform. it's no accident that my first time was a social media editor, because when you look at where people in their '20s and increasing in the '30s are getting their news, twitter comes up again and again and again. so it's not just a place to push local media, to push our stories out. i think everyone on this panel gets why facebook and twitter are important from a marketing standpoint of you. particularly when you don't have a lot of marketing dollars. but i think what what is perhaps less well understood is the extent to which people are really getting their news by following individual reporters and how we as journalists can also get our news that way. so from the get-go, again, i think it's going to be -- we are

committed in every realm digitally, newsgathering, marketing. and i think that's what innovation will come from for metrofocus. >> thank you. a hand for laura. [applause] >> our next speaker is approaching community but in a different way. jacquie jones is the executive director of the national black programming consortium, and she does many, many things, so one that i particularly would like her to talk about today is a public media corps, which is a new way of reaching community. >> i'd be happy to. i always feel like i just parachuted in from another universe because i'm not a journalist. and we really historic record with documentary filmmakers with public television, looking at ways to open up diversity within public television.

and i guess about a year and a half ago, around the time the commission came out with the information needs of societies, or community -- [inaudible] >> when that came out. [laughter] we really saw it as a way to focus on the demand side of the equation, that there was a real disconnect between a lot of the guys that we heard expressed today, and the actual communities that this work is intended for. we talk a lot about facebook and twitter and its beauties we are working in, over half the people do not have internet. they do not rely on the internet for their news. and so i think there's a lot of investment in digital that sort of exacerbates a divide. so we thought given our collaborative relationships, that there was a way to really look at how do we make the content that we now have such

value relevant in these different communities. and we begin this project, the public media corps, as a way to really explore as bill likes to say, what it's going to be. because along with the challenges over the last year, even before the budget, the budget crisis, the whole shifts of business models and the media landscape, that it seems it was an open and an opportunity. so we really begin to work with our public broadcasting partners, with high schools, with community serving organizations to really look at creating new pipelines into communities that public media could get traction on. so we recruited a core of 15 public media corps fellows. one of whom is here. to really start by talking to people in the community, asking them about how to use information, where they got it,

they trusted. and outlined those needs with the services that exist. to our partners including pbs and a local station here, we worked a lot with wamu in various kinds of ways to really create a network that has a real public service goal. and so we are kind of in the first year of a. it's been really encouraging and really interesting. and there's been a lot of attraction, particularly grating dialogue, rent education. and people, i think human needs to have a voice, in public affairs. because for us the information needs go beyond journalism to really history content and experience that a great the sense of a public square. so that's what we are, and i think how we fit into this. and i have now seen this topic and i want to say in horace

davis, there's two threes and when. so it's a little bit confusing. [laughter] >> okay, thank you. thank you, jacquie. [applause] >> in continuing the conversation about bringing new voices and new attitudes in, we are now calling on jessica clark who is the head of the future of public media project. thank heavens someone is doing that. at the center for social media. jessica is going to talk about the work she has been doing. thank you. >> so, at the center for social media over the last five years we have been running a forward foundation research project on the evolution of public broadcasting and to what we are calling public media 2.0. at the time we started this about santa very futuristic.

nonsense other retro. we're onto four-point oh. we're not sure that but that's what happens when you're on the cutting edge forget to keep running. we been really interested in this question of how public the well evolve in this moment of open participatory platforms, the shifting dynamics of not just news but cultural debate. and we've been trying different interventions and different research approaches to try to get this question, both within the field and within organizations and innovators outside of the field who are doing what we might think of as public media five years or maybe even suited. so one of the ways that i've been sort of approaching this is from across the ankle. we've been examining not just how you can inform citizens, but how you can increase the capacity of the way that they understand their role as citizens can't how information placed into the. the kinds of skills that they

need to survive and thrive in an increasingly digital communications environment. how to engage them, not in a partisan way but how to make the shift from an form citizens to citizens who are active, feel empowered, to participate in dialogue, know where to find funding and had to make arguments. we've been incubating the public record and document that experiment in trying to figure out how to really reach be on the news hours 5% of it mprc 11%, beyond the liberal white audience that a lot of people have criticized. we been examining projects like the makers quest to association of independents and reappeared where given money by cbp to support reducers -- reducers. one of those was not being mainstream project, paula mentioned that the stakeholders

from of me are the people who are on main street, not mean she. but the main streets are not housing. part of what the project as is it brings public media users, stakeholders, educators, community organizations in as contributors to tell us about their main street. there's more than 10,000 mentors across the couch. so far we got contributions and documentations from 700 plus. we've got a way to go. the platform is there. it's been very exciting to watch it grow. collaboration has been a signature topic here. we've been looking at not just collaboration across sector and what kind of like close his peers and allies like propublica, but also collaboration with the public collaboration outside the sector. sometimes risky partners who are experimenting with voices and approaches that represent different kinds of constituencies. finally, we've been working with

npr and pbs to host the national media can't. those are designed to bring national and local public media organizations into the room to brainstorm with developers, with community members about new kinds of engagement projects and what is needed. so, closing it off, how do we move beyond the perils compatibly untie public media from the railroad tracks? my two keywords come at what has there is, i will skip promiscuity although kashmir for another day. i would say not just innovation, not just new platforms, not just facebook and twitter, conclusion is going to be what takes public me into its next phase. >> thank you, jessica. [applause] >> and the next we're going to go to another form of inclusion, and that's to talk about the public insight network which was hard at minnesota public media and minnesota public radio and american public media.

and hear details about public insight network is its director, linda fantin. >> it's great to be here for many reasons, but one is that you hear all this wonderful work and collaboration and transmission and all of us. and the public insight network basically enjoys the position of being kind of the connective tissues that is built into the other projects that you just heard, and basically allows some of this collaboration to take place. my own background, i piggyback ride in newspapers, managing small weeklies in places like medicine bow and pine bill white on. and 13 or so plus years doing public affairs in reporting in salt lake city. when i came to ap in three matches ago, wasn't to escape the current turmoil that was gripping newspapers and print media, it wasn't to live in a place with a baseball season and winter overlap.

but it was because i saw in the public insight network visibility to just address some of the fundamental problems that are causing that turmoil. they have been building for a long time. those problems have to do with trust and transparency and transformation as well. and i can say that after three years of working in public media in managing the public insight network and helping amateur and getting into the hands of the most imaginative journalists in the country, as is without a doubt the most powerful platform for doing serious collaborative journalism. i'm not sure that that was what bill was aspiring to what he thought of the ideas ages ago, but he had built a company that was dedicated to principal journalism. and he knew that there were smart, thoughtful people all around us who have insight and knowledge that could inform and enrich our reporting and really keep us relevant. and so, he also knew that we

could use technology to basically create a back channel for all the sources to talk to our newsrooms, and to capture all the intelligence and knowledge in a searchable, sortable database. or as i like to call it, a library. we could make it accessible to reporters on deadline. so that's the genesis of the network agree. today where more than 100,000 sources around the country in every state, probably a few thousand asset of the country as well. and with almost 50 newsrooms that are engaging in building this network collaboratively of other country but they range from something as small as those planes into orbit to the bbc and the "washington post" and a number of other big market players. so think about that. that essential but it. i know reports from most reports i know will not share their sources with reporters sitting next to them. we've managed to create a common were not on a people sharing sources, they're doing so sometimes in the same market. so, some the things that kind of

learned is in a semi-thick, not just a toolset. it's about going out there and being very deliberative in that region and invited people and being inclusive. we can be deliberative about diversity. so we go out and seed the network with people we know are underrepresented in news coverage. and people who often we talk about but we don't talk to. we establish connections and we do it by building networks. these collaborations, you see that we've launched a project with america vibrant association just this week in which we are trying to find out what information and these are of committees through the lens of local libraries. something else i just want to end with is what we discovered is the experience isn't ideological. so if we seek knowledge and opinion rather than an opinion from people, we can cross the kind about his political and otherwise, and we can engage with people who otherwise might not feel close to the media. so, we move beyond the usual

suspects and the stereotypes and the soundbites that we don't just cori republicans and democrats about their politics. we talk to them about autism and parenting and prisons and gas prices. those other things that inform the stories we choose to pursue. so i will just end there and say that one of the joys of the public insight network is when i go into newsrooms i hear a lot about people have to do a lot more with less. and the public insight network is basically a way to do more with more. >> thank you. [applause] >> our very last speaker is mark stencel, national public radio who is the managing editor of the digital enterprise of npr. and who is going to take us behind the curtain a little bit and tell us about some things like public media platform and some other things that npr is doing digitally to try to share

and ramp up the whole system. market. >> thank you, barbara. and i just want to mention on the public insight network, that is something that some of our national reporters tap into as well. it's a great example of that kind of partnership being able to share tools and collaborate that was a great example of what is much easier to pull off in a public media sphere than it was when my job is making this kind of partnerships work for more profit media sphere. you know, you talked about looking behind the curtain, barbara. jessica just mentioned risky partnerships. you've heard my boss say that my job is promiscuity, some going to try to focus more on the g. rated terms of sharing, and particularly, our focus at npr has been to a large degree sharing our knowhow and sharing

are content with our member stations, and increasingly across the whole public media sphere. on the knowhow front, that mostly takes the form in our digital services operation in boston, which was previously known as public interactive. and that's a part of npr that is entirely focused on sharing tools and best practices, and all of our digital expertise with the stations. and it's a training mechanism. it's technology. and its working in really interesting ways, and is provided an outlet for us to go and engage stations very sometimes wonder what and how to to online journalism well. ..

>> and we've heard about project argo earlier and you've heard about the impact of government project the blogging component of that. our digital operations working with stations to create local news blogs. most of the stations that we work with are not swimming in resources. they need -- you know, they need an efficient way to get original journalism out in front of people. that platform -- blogging is a

great way to do that. it's not as bill described earlier. it's not reporting reporting on what other people are reporting. it's a great way to efficiently deliver great and original stuff. on the content side in terms of sharing that, we've had an open api that allows us to distribute our journalism -- >> say when an api is. >> an api is really a series of technologies that allow us take the content that's in our digital warehouse and make that part of our station site. so if anything to the kqed page or the wbur home page and other stations that are tapping in this api they can make their journalism part of our journalism online. it's also a means by which we can take in their journalism and redistribute it to other stations and use it ourselves. and through an cpb-funded venture called the media platform we've been exploring

ways to take a system like that and maybe apply it for broadly across the entire public media universe and we'll see where that leads. but the initial phase of that project discovery. and there's some recommendations behind it. and now we'll see where that could take us. the interesting thing about that -- someone earlier talked about the possibility, well, why don't you all get together -- why are these all different public media events. the public media platform like the one we've been talking about with our partners in crime is a means of doing that without losing what's unique and distinctive about each of the public media ventures as well as each of the stations that are in our system, that allows us to get the most use out of each other's work while also standing out and standing alone when we need to and want to. >> okay, thank you, mark. [applause] >> give mark a hand.

mraus mra[applause] >> i'm going to ask the people who are helping us with the microphones to take two of the microphones away. and we will now turn to you for your questions, so just raise your hand and someone will bring a microphone to you. there's a question right here. >> thank you. hi, i'm sue goodwin. i work at national public radio. i produce ""talk of the nation."" i want to thank the missouri school of journalism. this has been really enjoyable and i got a bunch of ideas in my head but what i want to ask the panelists is two questions because when you talk about public radio, you think npr, pri, apm. when you talk public tv you think pbs but when you say public media digital, what are the sailient qualities that make

that work because i think dick and joyce and paula and karen and bill and jim have all been wonderful at expressing what that means in the radio and tv format but what makes public digital media public? and then i also want to expand on what mark brought up because, how do you not get lost in the sea? and i don't want to put jacque but you've done some thinking when npr pbs came online but what brings public media together so that it's branded in a way that the public knows what it means. >> okay. let's take the question about what do we mean by public media as opposed to public broadcasting? you know, there's some people who think that the nonprofit websites like propublica should

be eligible for the money to go see to cpb and there's some people who think cpb should be corporation for public -- >> so public broadcasting wasn't always a coherent entity. it was started with a lot of small educational stations that were massed up into this thing that we're now all discussing, you know. and so part of what we've been trying to think about is what -- what's out there in the digital space that meets the criteria? and what is that criteria. there's a ton of debate and the way we've been discussing it at the center for so i shall media. it's public knowledge and action and again not action and public in their role as citizens and it fills the market gap. this is not only saying public media can do this but public media meets these goals of addressing people as citizens first, not consumers first. it has a lot of the same

qualities as a broadcast, trusted, fact-checked. we can argue about whether it's transparent or objective or balanced or what -- you know, how to interpret those terms. there's an entire debate on that. but it also has some of these other qualities that we see in the projects that are not only news-based. it engages people's curiosity. it makes them go deeper, to explore more. it links out to other sources. and brings people into dialog. so you can see a lot of that happening on the -- on the websites and apps and games and everything on the public media sites but you can also see it happening out in the world and there are a lot of new ways in which people are being engaged online. and so part of the challenge on the next phase and even something like the public media platform will change the way that the broadcast productions make their way out into the world. part of the challenge of the next phase is to identify not just the most obvious things but

some of the really kind of -- the things that are going to germinate and turn into something exciting. >> thank you. >> i mean, the only thing i would add to that is that i think part of the way forward and part of what will instigate a real change is to broaden the pool of stakeholders. what we have is talking to each other. and i think opening up the communication with the audience or the public or the user, you know, really changes the nature of what we're talking about. i mean, one of the things -- like we approached our project thinking like, oh, we've got these terrific assets, people want them. we just need to make them available. and what we found is we don't have the right assets to engage certain communities. we need different kinds of content, you know, the information needs are different. and what we've -- sort of how we've approached it is how do we as public media organizations

make our content more available and not, what is -- how does that content resonate with people? where is it sailing to meet the needs of people? and how do we really have a two-way conversation so that those needs are reflected in what we do. >> okay. anybody else want to get in on this? okay. we have another question. >> good morning, thank you one and all. i'm jameala bay former npr announcer. i want to piggyback what you were just talking about jacquie. where are the new ideas coming from? we all think public media is wonderful. we all agree with one another about the content and the types of stories and the types of programming that gets done across the various platform. but considering that what happens on public -- in public

media and what happens in media that arbitron and other, you know, measures are looking at -- there is such a disparity, what is propelling the ideas moving forward so that we can bring more of america into public media with different ideas and different voices? >> well, i would say that those ideas are coming from everywhere these days and it's out of necessity. you know, it's not just collaboration. you know, our partners -- i mean, it was almost -- i mean, it's commonsense the public networks started in the public media space because it, you know -- public media already has a strong history of connecting with communities and strengthening communities that's built into our dna. i'm not so sure that that is and has always been the case in commercial media. but i can tell you as someone who's visited numerous news rooms in the last three years that innovation is there.

i mean, it requires a little spark and a little juice to get it going, but, you know, and i'm not just talking about, you know, big media companies like, you know -- with the "new york times" and "the washington post." i'm talking about places like, you know, oregon public broadcasting and the center for investigative reporting and, you know, little startups like inews. so the ideas are all out there. i think it takes some willpower and frankly it takes the power of some institutions. i mean, we have an obligation of new companies whether we're legacy or new to bring those ideas to the market and test them and not be afraid to fail. and that's, you know, typically not been the hallmark of commercial media. i mean, there's a lot of capital at risk when you fail. but that's what i think is going to be the key. >> anybody else want to weigh in on that? >> i think the earlier question about why can't public radio and

public television be the same thing is that, you know, when i look at -- when i listen to wmau and what they can do on the air and i look at whet and even weta on what they can do on the air, there's just a really huge difference between the capacity of public radio to be responsive and the capacity of public television to be responsive. i mean, the newshour, you know, is our nimble fish, but, you know, we have a lot of series that take a long time to turn around. that cost a lot of money. and a lot of local stations that just don't have the capacity anymore to produce local programming. and i think that's one of the things that's been lost in the budget debate is that what's happened is the local stations have lost their capacity to be -- the local tv stations, to be responsive in the way public radio can be responsive. and i think that's something that we don't really talk about, but that has to at some point find its way into the -- into the discussion. >> uh-huh. >> linda is going to take --

>> i just want to follow up on that 'cause i agree with you. that the difficulties for the public tv stations at the local level stem from a combination of things, but funding is a big part of it. it just cost a lot more to do a television program than it does to do a radio program. but that's where i think the platform -- the digital platform comes in because i think that's what hari was demonstrating that there is a way to collaborate online without spending enormous amounts of money involved in television production and to take advantage of the resources of the radio reporting community as well as the community you're speaking about and the independent producers community. that's where i see the most bang for the buck in terms of collaborative ventures. and then everybody takes whatever the common product is and does something with their

own medium but it begins and flourishes online. >> and janet spoke of a radio station as buying cameras to aid their online reporting and npr is doing the same. so increasingly we're all coming together. do we have another question? we have one more here. [inaudible] >> oh, i'm sorry, we have someone with a microphone. >> i'm linda, cohost of white house chronicle which is on pbs and also on public education in government access channels. and so far i have not heard anybody discuss public education in government access. these are very, very dedicated stations across the united states. there are about 2,000 of them. they're very eager to get programming. they have very talented staff. it won't cost a lot of money to get your shows on and i think

it's something, as i've said, where they've not really been engaged from what i can hear from conversations here. and they're an untapped resource. so i'd like somebody to comment on these channels. >> okay. you're quite right. we did -- we did draw a line around public broadcasting but, jessica, you've done some work in this area. >> one of the ways we've been talking about expand the term public media is to include all of the nonprofit media outlets, not just receive money through cpb but have sort of federal support and state support in different ways. and the public access stations have been feeling kind of aggrieve public suddenly the public broadcasters think maybe we should talk to our audience. that would be a good idea. where they've been pioneering this access and volumism and inclusion. the problem is they're extremely underresourced. they have to fight for their survival state-by-state and they're preaching the same

transition that the public broadcasters are. so to make this shift from analog to digital in a moment of great competition. so part of what we've been examining at the new america foundation is how those access centers can become hubs for moving people into digital access, can become hubs for community, news, and hyperlocal news and become viable partners for local tv stations who don't have the capacity to produce things that represent their community. so there's definitely an opportunity there. there are definitely, you know, great examples of invention. and the dialog should be much more robust than it is currently. >> yes. okay. this is going to be our last question 'cause we've promised c-span that we'll finish. >> i'm honored to be the last question of the day. my name is dan sonnet. i'm an independent producer who in part creates projects for pbs that are for other independent

producers national programs. and i'd like to hear as maybe a final question in the future moving forward and we talked about localization and serving a very specific geographical offices and we also talked about focusing very deeply on stories, so following a story. and maybe those are potentially two different audiences where there may be a community around a story that is vastly different -- different in its geography. that maybe extends over the borders of our country and how do you balance both your editorial resources and your technology resources to serve those two different audiences moving forward? thank you. >> okay. don't all speak at once. [laughter] >> hari, do you have a thought about that? [laughter] >> i'm sorry. the question was, how do you balance your editorial and what

resources? technology resources? [inaudible] >> yes. >> well, i think geography matters less and less over time for more and more people. i know that there are certain issues, yeah, i have a gas line down. it's in my neighborhood. that's really relevant to me on a geographic sort of location but if i was interested in ag journalism it doesn't matter if i live in dc i can find their website. i think over time people are going to gravitate -- i mean, you saw on the "washington post," you're basically building channels. you're building your own google news. you're building it based on topics that are relevant to you. so over time i don't know if the geography factor becomes that important because you're going to have a larger consumer base from people outside of that geography that might end up subsidizing the cost of production of whatever it is that you're trying to get done. >> what is the impact is that on

local stations? >> i mean, i think that there's a -- i think one of the biggest challenges we have is that geography actually matters a lot and topics matter a lot. and part of what we are trying to say to stations is to focus on both but to figure out which parts of those two stories to go that they can handle distinctly so when wmau decides to focus on race on class as a niche that they can own in the washington area, that brings them a different kind of audience. it let's them focus deeply on a particular subject matter, and that subject matter actually has a potential national audience that they can also reach out to. the same time we're in places -- working with people like michigan public radio, on broad local news blogs that are focused on owning the region but not in a way that says, go chase every car crash or murder case

that a local tv station might cover or a local paper might cover. find the stories that are distinctive, that are being missed. as dick said early on in this conversation. go to the places where the competition isn't going and let that help you stand out in this very crowded media world that we're all working in. >> okay. >> i have to say, i agree with mark. i mean, i started by saying that new york is an incredible newstown and that's true but our biggest, most important newspaper, the "new york times" has cut back significantly on local coverage. and i think it's no accident that hyperlocal blogs have blossomed over the last couple of years because people both have a desire for geographically specific local news and a hundreder what is going on in their neighborhoods and that's the part about what makes digital journalism so exciting is that there's these instantaneous abilities to

connect with your audience when i think about the most emotional experience i've had as a consumer of public media, it was probably listening to the clinton inauguration and specifically maya angelou's poem in my car in los angeles where i was living at the time. it was a private, you know, emotional interaction. if i had been doing that today, in a digital forum, i would have had an ability to express that feeling and participate in a -- in a community. >> uh-huh. >> and i think that's sort of what the future is. >> thank you. well, thank you to our panel. you've all been fabulous. [applause] >> we said that the purpose of this program was to talk about the future of public broadcasting. i think by the end we've talked about the future of public media

and of public information and have the public. so thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations proximate [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> president obama is traveling to fort campbell, kentucky, today to meet privately with some of the special operations team involved in the shooting of osama bin laden. after that private meeting, the president is expected to make remarks to soldiers at fort campbell and we'll have those live for you starting 3:50

eastern on our companion network, c-span. >> april job numbers were released this morning. unemployment rose to 9%. it's up from 8.8% in march. private payrolls also grew 24,000 a higher expected rate. it's for the second consecutive jobs. the hiring spree was the biggest in five years. you can see today's joint economic hearing with the bureau of labor statistics director, keith hill, later on our schedule. also anytime at our website, c-span.org. coming up here on c-span2 at 4:00 eastern this afternoon, the republican national lawyers association's annual policy conference taking place here in washington. among the speakers, former new

york mayor and 2008 gop presidential candidate rudy giuliani and republican national committee chair reince preibus. that's again here at 4:00 pm on c-span2. this weekend on american history tv on c-span3, university of nevada las vegas professor david schwartz on the vegas strip of the 1940s and '50s. an evening of conversation with descendents of those who traveled and worked the underground railroad and an examination of the life story of ronald reagan and whether it could have happened anywhere else but in the golden state. get the complete weekend schedule at c-span.org/history or have it emailed to you by pressing the c-span alert button. >> this weekend on booktv on c-span2, francis fuyiama on

pass >> a discussion now on japanese foreign policy. we'll hear about shifts on japan's attitudes on u.s. and china since the end of world war ii. this was part of a day-long conference organized by george washington university here in the nation's capital. and following this panel, a discussion on foreign policy towards india. >> thank you. [inaudible]

>> that's right. okay. all right. we now move on to the japan session, and i'm really pleased to be able to introduce the chair for the japan session, michael schiffer, who's joining us from the department of defense. he's the deputy assistant secretary of defense for east asia. and we've got, you know, a number of people from the government over here. very, very busy people. and the fact that they're joining us, i'm just going to assume that it means that they think our project is really, really important. and they didn't want to miss it. but his full bio is in the -- in the folder that you've got, but mr. schiffer came to the -- his present job from the stanley foundation where he was the -- running the policy analysis and dialog and the asia programs in the foundation. i remember that stanley foundation was one of the first, i believe, to look at this idea of rising powers and try to

write about that. and it was very useful. and so i think it's particularly relevant that mr. schiffer could join us today. he's also been a fellow at the council on foreign relations. he's also worked at the u.s. senate with dianne feinstein. and he has also worked at the nyu center for war, peace and news and media. he's done a lot of things. he's also a pretty eclectic number of pursuits including something about a bed and breakfast, running that. so anyway, i'm sure he's bringing a lot of wealth of experience to the table today. so, michael, i'll turn it over to you. and just a word of caution to anybody who's up here. apparently we're not supposed to shut this computer under any circumstance 'cause it shuts off something in the technology and we won't be able to get the slides back up. so just a word of caution.

thank you. >> well, thank you very much. >> i'm sorry, one more thing. [inaudible] [laughter] >> an incentive for me for that is -- [laughter] >> yeah. that's never a good place to be. i'll move over there. there's always lots of -- lots of downside and very little upside in these sorts of activities. my thank you for asking me to join you this morning. this is the sort of conversation and discussion that we don't have the opportunity to engage in as often as we ought to, in the policy community. and for those of us as david and i were talking about before, you don't want to make a habit of it

but every now and then you want to try to make policy decisions based on some information. [laughter] >> and analysis. being able to spend a few minutes with you all this morning and to try to build some much-needed intellectual capital is extraordinarily valuable. so my thanks for doing this and my thanks for inviting me to come along for the ride. we'll try to make up for the time that our colleagues on the china panel have stolen from us, but that's -- that's a feeling that i think those of us that work japan are increasingly used to. [laughter] >> in any case, i'll offer by way of some very brief introduction that, you know, one of the things that has really impressed itself over the past couple of years while i've been at the department of defense is the -- i'm not sure that i would say primacy but the -- t