Brain Trust - Rea Hederman

Rea Hederman is Assistant Director of The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis (CDA), where he is also Research Fellow. He joined The Matt Friedeman Show to discuss unemployment rates. Below are the "CliffsNotes" of his interview.

What do the most recent numbers tell us?

I think for the first time in the last couple months, we've seen a significant drop in unemployment rates.

However, we're going to need a lot more in the future to get America back where it was.

I think what we need to see is better policies coming out of Washington. 

Businesses need to be able to plan their finances for a year or two in the future. Temporary fixes just aren't going to help them.

What does Congress need to do?

We need to see some permanent policies. Congress needs to make the lower tax rates permanent.

We also have to figure out how we're going to pay off our massive debt. Businesses aren't expanding, because they're afraid their taxes are going to increase to help pay off this debt.

We don't have to pay it all off in chunks, but we need to show people that we're serious about the magnitude of this problem.

What job sectors are doing well?

Healthcare has always been one of the fastest-growing sectors in society. Also, natural resources is becoming very big.

Construction is still very weak, as is finance. It's going to be a hard job for construction and real estate to get back where they were in 2006.

Our brighter days continue to be ahead of us, but we have some challenges that we have to face.