Real unemployment in November was 11.4 percent, the U.S. Labor Department announced on Friday. “We need to put the unemployed back to work and raise wages,” Sanders said in a Senate speech on Tuesday. Up to 15,000 good Postal Service jobs may be eliminated starting in January unless Congress stops the planned cuts, senators warned in a series of speeches on Thursday. On Wednesday, Sanders chaired a hearing on exorbitant drug prices. And on Friday, the senator welcomed students from across Vermont to a Youth Climate Summit at the University of Vermont.

Jobs The government’s broadest measure of unemployment stood at 11.4 percent in November. The figure counts workers forced to settle for part-time jobs and others who gave up looking for work. 

Raise the Minimum Wage The new jobless numbers were announced one day after fast-food workers and others in low-paying jobs launched one-day strikes across the United States demanding a $15 an hour minimum wage and union rights. Sanders spoke to protesters outside the Air and Space Museum in Washington. Watch

An American Economic Agenda In his major Senate speech on Tuesday, Sanders said the American people face a fundamental choice. “Do we continue the 40-year decline of our middle class and the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else, or do we fight for a progressive economic agenda?” Watch, Read more in The Huffington Post 

Drug Prices A Senate panel on Wednesday examined exorbitant prices for new treatments for hepatitis C, an often fatal liver disease. Gilead, the leading manufacturer of the drugs, refused to testify at the hearing about the $84,000 it charges for a 12-week regimen of Sovaldi and the $94,500 price tag for a newer drug, Harvoni. The price per pill is about $1,000 for Sovaldi $1,125 for Harvoni. “What we are looking at is a very excessive profit,” said Sanders, chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. He called it “deplorable” and a “moral issue” that the life-saving drug may have to be rationed by the Department of Veterans Affairs because the price makes it unaffordable for all who need it.

Save the Postal Service Warning that the future of the U.S. Postal Service is at stake, Sanders on Thursday called on managers of the mail system to back off plans to slow deliveries and eliminate as many as 15,000 jobs. Despite big increases in revenue, Postal Service managers are forging ahead with a self-destructive plan to close up to 82 mail-sorting centers and gut first-class mail standards. House Republican leaders refused to consider a plea by 51 senators, a majority, and 160 members of the House of Representatives who signed a letter supporting a moratorium on the cuts. Increasing revenue would have resulted in nearly $1 billion in profits over the past two years except for an unprecedented requirement that the Postal Service sink billions of dollars into an already-flush fund for future retiree health benefits. The requirement was slipped into law at the request of President George W. Bush during a lame-duck session of Congress. Watch

Youth Climate Summit Vermont high school students and teachers from schools throughout the state gathered at UVM on Friday. They worked in small teams to create climate action plans for their high schools. “The summit provided a great opportunity not only to help students develop action plans that will tangibly decrease the carbon footprint of their high schools, but also to pass along to younger peers some of the optimism and passion we feel about addressing climate change,” said Amelia Fontein, a UVM junior from Tinmouth, Vermont.