Leadership Quote by Tim Bishop

Bishop’s line is politician-speak with a purpose: to name a rupture without naming a culprit. “For a variety of reasons” is the key move, a soft-focus preface that signals seriousness while sidestepping the political landmines that follow any specific diagnosis: trade policy, automation, the decline of unions, corporate offshoring, the financialization of the economy, even local zoning and education failures. It’s an invitation for multiple constituencies to hear their own preferred explanation in the pause.

The phrase “not producing at a given level of economic activity” does quiet but crucial work. It separates growth from jobs, puncturing the old promise that GDP gains automatically translate into broad employment. That’s the post-2000, post-2008 anxiety in one sentence: you can have “recovery” on paper and stagnation at the kitchen table. Bishop is pointing to a structural shift - productivity rising, labor share falling, and whole categories of middle-skill work hollowing out - without sounding like he’s indicting “the market” or admitting policy failure.

Then comes the nostalgia lever: “the jobs we used to have.” It’s less an economic claim than a moral one, smuggling in the idea that those jobs were stable, dignified, and socially anchoring. Subtext: the system’s bargain has changed, and government owes an answer. Contextually, this reads like a bridge statement meant to justify intervention (job training, industrial policy, infrastructure, incentives) while keeping the coalition intact: business-friendly enough to avoid panic, worker-aware enough to acknowledge that something real has been lost.