For the first time since the start of the Great Recession, the unemployment rate is below 6 percent. America has experienced 55 consecutive months of net job creation, resulting in the addition of 10.3 million new jobs.

The full employment movement and all its affiliates and supporters need to support the passage of legislation that guarantees a living wage job for everyone who wants one. A step in that direction is Rep. John Conyers (D- MI), H.R. 1000, the Humphrey Hawkins 21st Century Full Employment and Training Act.

In the wake of an unprecedented period of high unemployment and amid turmoil overseas, a president stood before a joint session of Congress for his annual State of the Union address, offering a bold vision to expand economic opportunity, strengthen the middle class and reduce inequality. The year was 1944. The president was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Today, in response to the ongoing jobs crisis in America, Representatives John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), José Serrano (D-N.Y.), and Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) announced the creation of a Congressional Full Employment Caucus.

This bill will create a national jobs program, including 3.1 to 6.2 million jobs, and 1 to 2 million additional jobs indirectly over the first two years, in affordable housing, rural and urban community rehabilitation, energy conservation and weatherization, infrastructure repair, education, human services, and first response teams.

However, anyone who thinks Conyers’ time has passed has not run around with him on his still frenetic schedule of meetings and actions.  He is as effective as ever and still runs the meetings with precise organization and energy driving to further action.

Conyers said this week, “My most important bill is the Full Employment Act,” and he convenes weekly meetings in his office with national and Detroit leaders on strategies to increase jobs by legislation, executive action, and pushes in the media.