The unemployment rate ticked down to 7.4 percent in July but real unemployment last month was 14 percent, according to a Labor Department survey released on Friday. The 14 percent figure factors in those who have given up looking for work and those forced to settle for part-time jobs. Thousands of fast-food workers have been holding one-day strikes to demand higher wages, a movement that Sen. Bernie Sanders applauded in a Senate floor speech on Thursday. On the health care front, Sanders on Wednesday renewed a push for a single-payer system that costs less but gets better results. And on Tuesday he joined Veterans Administration officials at an exhibit of cutting-edge technology that is improving patient care and cutting costs.

Jobs July was the 34th straight month of employment gains but at a pace so slow it would take about seven years to close the so-called jobs gap created by the recession. “While we have, of course, made progress in the last five years since the Wall Street fiasco and losing 700,000 jobs a month, real unemployment today remains at 14 percent,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said. “So anybody who thinks we’re at a good place in terms of employment is wrong,” he said on The Thom Hartmann Program. Listen to Brunch with Bernie.

Starvation Wages Workers in St. Louis, Kansas City and Detroit on Wednesday picketed McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Popeye’s and Long John Silver’s restaurants seeking to double their hourly wages to $15 an hour at 200,000 fast-food restaurants across the country. “I rise today to congratulate hundreds and hundreds of young people throughout the country who are standing up for justice, who are putting a spotlight on one of the major economic crises facing this country,” Sanders said in a Senate floor speech. “What they are saying is workers cannot make it on $7.25 an hour, $7.50 an hour. Often they are unable to get 40 hours of work and in most cases they get no or very limited benefits,” Sanders added. “What they are saying is we need to raise the minimum wage in this country.” While fast-food chains pay what Sanders called “starvation wages,” he noted the exorbitant compensation for top executives at the same firms. The Burger King CEO, Bernardo Hees, just got a 61 percent pay raise boosting his total yearly compensation to $6.5 million. Last year, McDonald’s tripled the compensation of CEO Don Thompson to $13.8 million. David Novak, the boss at Yum Brands, the owners of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken received more than $44 million in stock options. Watch the speech.

Medicare for All On Wednesday’s 48th anniversary of Congress passing the law that created Medicare, Sanders joined a coalition advocating a Medicare-for-all health care system to provide better care at less cost. “It is long past time that we recognize health care is a right, not a privilege,” Sanders said at a Capitol Hill news conference. “I am proud that Vermont is leading the nation in working to establish a single-payer system to provide better care at less cost.” The United States today spends about twice as much per capita on health care as other major nations but has worse outcomes, Sanders noted. The Affordable Care Act is a step forward, he said, but approximately 30 million Americans will still be without health insurance after the new law is fully implemented, according to the Congressional Budget Office.  Watch the news conference.

VA Health Care Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Sanders on Tuesday attended a demonstration of new technology that lets isolated veterans connect to doctors and other health care providers from home for problems ranging from depression to diabetes. Sanders praised the VA for what he called an extremely good job taking advantage of modern technology. The VA is doing “cutting-edge work” in telehealth “which the rest of the medical community around the country I think is going to learn from,” Sanders pointed out the advantages for veterans living in rural states like Vermont. Watch the news conference.

Shady Lenders Despite better enforcement of consumer protection laws, problems persist with loans, veterans’ benefits and retired pay and pensions, witnesses said at a hearing on Wednesday before the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee. In the last six months, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has received 1,939 complaints related to the financial protections, said Holly Petraeus of the bureau’s office of service member affairs. Chairman Sanders said his goal is to improve protections and to press the federal government to for “aggressive enforcement.” Read more.

Student Loans The House on Wednesday approved and sent to President Obama legislation that creates new rates for federal student loans.  The bill cleared the Senate one week earlier. Sanders voted no and accused the White House being “disingenuous” and “trying to sweep under the rug big increases in interest rates for students and parents in the near future.”

The Fed President Obama on Wednesday tried to beat back criticism of Lawrence Summers from congressional Democrats who don't want to see a proponent of bank deregulation get the top job at the Federal Reserve. Summers, who was treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, was a leading proponent of deregulating banks and financial markets. “It would be a tragic mistake to nominate anyone as chair of the Fed who continued those failed policies,” Sanders said. In a letter sent last Sunday to President Obama, ders suggested a pair of dark-horse contenders. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich “may not be at the top of the White House list, but they should be,” John Nichols blogged for The Nation. Read The Nation. Read Sanders’ letter to Obama.