Obama to press Congress on minimum wage boost

President Obama on Monday will tout the progress made since the economic collapse during Labor Day remarks in Milwaukee.

{mosads}A White House official said Obama will also honor working Americans and will reaffirm his commitment to ensure more Americans can realize their dreams.

During remarks at Milwaukee’s Laborfest celebration, Obama will again call on Congress to raise the minimum wage, the official said.

Α blog post published Monday by Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman and National Economic Council Director Jeff Zients described recent labor market data as “encouraging.”

“Businesses have now added nearly 10 million jobs over 53 straight months of job growth, the longest streak on record,” they wrote. “Total job gains have exceeded 200,000 in each of the last six months, the first time that has happened since 1997. And the unemployment rate has fallen rapidly since mid-2013 to reach 6.2 percent in July, 1.1 percentage point less than a year ago.”

Furman and Zients write that much of the decline in the unemployment rate has come as a result of declines in long-term unemployment.

“In fact, falling long-term unemployment accounts for more than 60 percent of the drop in the overall unemployment rate in the last twelve months,” they wrote. “This is a disproportionately large share given that one-third of the jobless are long-term unemployed.

“Nevertheless, because the long-term unemployment rate more than quadrupled as a result of the recession, the declines seen recently are still not yet sufficient to return long-term unemployment to pre-recession levels,” they added.

Obama used his most recent weekly address to prod Congress to increase the $7.25 federal minimum wage.

In Saturday’s speech, the president highlighted recent economics successes and historical changes that he credited to the labor movement.

Obama credited a wide range of policies that benefit workers, including Social Security, Medicare and weekends, to past fights by labor unions.

He said those policies build a stronger middle class, but the middle class would be even stronger if workers could share in economic prosperity.

“Raising the minimum wage would be one of the best ways to give a boost to working families,” Obama said.

–Timothy Cama contributed to this report.