WASHINGTON—In a promising development for the nation’s workforce, a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Labor shows that employers created approximately 40,000 new jobs, additional responsibilities, and miscellaneous tasks for their existing employees last month. “Despite unwavering unemployment figures, I’m proud to report that private sector companies continue to add many, many new jobs to their employees’ workloads,” Labor Secretary Thomas Perez told reporters, saying that managers and supervisors across the country are actively increasing the number of commitments and obligations expected of their staff. “In every industry, companies are drastically increasing the amount of work that needs to be completed, as well as tacking on thousands of assignments previously performed by departed employees. In many cases, we are even finding that employers have brought on several unpaid interns to share in the abundance of job duties.” Perez noted that, as an added benefit, the increase in the amount of work being performed by the nation’s jobholders has enabled these same individuals to accumulate millions of hours of unpaid overtime.

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