The public sector certainly includes the Department of Labor. Those are jobs that are available. They are open and they are good paying jobs. The government as a whole has been actually retrenching under President Clinton’s leadership.

Herman’s remarks frame federal employment—specifically within the Department of Labor—as a legitimate and attractive part of the job market, emphasizing that such positions are “open” and “good paying.” The second point counters a common political critique that Democratic administrations expand government payrolls: she argues that, under President Clinton, the federal government was “retrenching,” i.e., reducing or tightening staffing and spending. Read together, the quote functions as both recruitment-style reassurance about public-sector opportunities and a defense of Clinton-era governance as fiscally restrained rather than expansionary.