Elaine Chao

What out country is facing right now is a skills gap. ”

The ingenuity and creativity of the private sector is essential to meeting American's needs for a skilled work force. ”

Outside of Washington, D.C., most Americans aren't concerned with doing things 'big.' They're looking for less government spending, lower taxes, and good jobs. ”

Smoot and Hawley ginned up The Tariff Act of 1930 to get America back to work after the Stock Market Crash of '29. Instead, it destroyed trade so effectively that by 1932, American exports to Europe were just a third of what they had been in 1929. World trade fell two-thirds as other nations retaliated. Jobs evaporated. ”

Even when America's economy has been by all measures healthy and the unemployment rate low, some businesses suffer or fail and lay off workers. But nearly always, a simultaneous and even greater burst of new jobs has been created to offset the jobs lost - millions of new jobs every year. ”

Even a healthy economy and labor market would have struggled under the additional expenses enacted and proposed in 2009 and 2010 - from healthcare mandates and higher taxes, to carbon cap-and-trade and delay in extending the last decade's tax reforms. ”

Three years after the four deepest previous recessions began - in 1953, 1957, 1973 and 1981 - employment was on average 4.7% higher than the pre-recession peak. ”

Nan Gorman was born in Memphis, Tenn., on St. Patrick's Day. She moved to Hazard in 1929 when her father, James Hagan, a recent medical school graduate and aspiring surgeon, went to work there. ”

Our private-sector work force is the most industrious, innovative, productive, and ambitious in the world. ”

I'm the first secretary of labor in the 21st century, and the competitiveness of the American work force and the modernization of decades-old regulations have been among our top priorities. ”