Joe Biden did not allow the GOP to drive a narrative blaming the rescue plan and lazy workers. He came out swinging.
Biden gets ahead of the false employment narrative
So far, President Joe Biden are making mostly the right moves. Today’s jobs report is a great example.
The US economy added 266,000 jobs in April, a huge miss compared to the 1 million jobs economists expected. The unemployment rate in April ticked up a bit to 6.1 percent, as the number of jobs added didn’t outpace the size of the workforce. The Black unemployment rate increased to 9.7 percent, while the white unemployment rate fell to 5.3 percent.
The news left many people, well, shook. “This is a big miss that changes how we think about the recovery,” University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers tweeted. Indeed economist Nick Bunker wrote that it “might be one of the most disappointing jobs numbers of all time.”
“Obviously, this is an incredibly disappointing report,” Bunker told Vox in an interview. “All the signs from all the other data that we have is that demand for workers is quite strong, and the report today, while it doesn’t point in the direction of, say, massive labor shortages, it suggests that there is some hesitancy out there on behalf of workers to take out some jobs, be it because of fear of the virus, child care constraints, or concerns about the instability of jobs.”
Biden made it clear that if one averages his three months in offices, there have been 500,000 jobs/month created under his tenure. More importantly, he said that America is digging out of a big hole, and the economy still needs help in the form of The American Jobs Plan and The American Families Plan. He dispelled the notion that generous unemployment insurance is playing a huge part in the less-than-stellar jobs report.
Many Americans are getting unemployment wages up till September that effectively pays them a minimum wage of $15.00. Businesses are balking. Employers want those bodies on their jobs at slave wages they were used to paying pre-pandemic. Many American workers are taking advantage of a bit of good fortune after decades of abuse. It is great to see for a change that the American worker, the ones who are really responsible for our economic success, get a good break for a change.