Building and Construction Trades Department President Mark H. Ayers says the July 2011 report released by the U.S. Department of Labor on Aug. 5 “is simply the latest piece of evidence that we are a nation in desperate need of a sustained and credible effort to create American jobs, especially in the construction industry where the unemployment rate in July was 13.6 percent.”

Ayers says the “dismal performance” of the stock market as of late represents “a double whammy for American workers, who must now suffer the indignity of watching their retirement portfolios evaporate before their eyes as they also seek to find meaningful and sustained employment.”