month and sluggish wage growth. the white house put out this statement following the announcement. "a range of factors, including the weather and global economic slowdown have affected economic data for the first quarter. the president has been clear that lee will continue to push for policies including investments in infrastructure and relief from the sequester that would help ensure the strong underlying longer-term trends persist." secretary of commerce penny pritzker is joining us now. thank you for joining me. >> thank you, kate. it's great to be here and to have the opportunity to talk about our economy, which remains strong and continues to grow. you know we've created over 12 million jobs over the last 61 months. and in fact in the last year the private sector has created 3.1 million jobs. so the united states continues to have a strong economy and continues to be growing.