Biden Calls Jobs Report ‘Great News’ for U.S. Economy

Watch below as President Joe Biden speaks about the May jobs report and touts progress in job growth and Covid-19 vaccinations in the first months of his administration. He addressed reporters in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

“The unemployment rate is now below 6% for the first time since the pandemic hit.”

 

Pres. Biden: Today, we received great news for our economy and our recovery and for the American people. This morning, we learned that in May, our economy created 559,000 new jobs. Unemployment rate fell to 5.8% and wages went up for American workers. That means we have now created over two million jobs in total since I took office. More jobs than ever been created in the first four months of any presidency in modern history. Triple the rate of my predecessor, eight times the rate of President Reagan. The unemployment rate is now below 6% for the first time since the pandemic hit. The first 14 months, first time, first time in 14 months, we saw the largest decline in the number of long term unemployed, in more than an entire decade. In the last 10 years, long term unemployment dropped by the second largest amount ever recorded. Not only that, but the signs of further progress are already here. This report is based on a weekly and a week in early May. That’s how we determine the job growth or loss.

We have growth. And that in this that week in may, we only had 35% of working age adults had been fully vaccinated. Now we’re still all where they were, still all wearing masks. Since then, 21 million more adults have gotten vaccinated, making it easy for them to return to work safely. In short, this is progress, historic progress, progress that’s pulling our economy out of the worst crisis has been in hundreds years. And it’s testament to the new strategy that is growing across this economy, not only growing up a growing from the bottom up in the middle out. Remember when I took office in January, our economy was in a tailspin. Job growth and stalled. COVID was raising average initial claims for unemployment insurance were over 830,000 per week. Now, those claims have fallen below 430 thousand, about half of what they were when I took office before I took office.

Almost 24 million Americans are going hungry. Remember those long lines of cars miles long, people waiting for just a box of food to be put in their trunk. That number has already dropped by 25% Still too many, but clear progress. Before I took office, independent experts were projecting that the American economy would grow by 3% or 4% in 2021 this year. This week, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and development, the so-called OCED, which makes up a group, includes some of the world’s largest economies and its membership and has been one of the leading bodies analyzing economic growth worldwide. And individual nations increase their projection for US economic growth this year to 6.9% in 2021. That’s the fastest pace in nearly four decades. In fact, the US is the only major economy where projections of future growth are stronger today than they were before the pandemic hit in twenty, and in May. Manufacturing activity was nearly as strong as it was. And more than 15 years stronger than 15 years. No other major economy, a major economy in the world is growing as fast as ours. No other major economy is gaining jobs as quickly as ours. And none of this success is an accident. It isn’t luck. It’s still in no small part. First of all, the cooperation of the American people and responding to my effort to get it under control, wearing masks initially and getting vaccinated. And it’s no small part to the bold action we took by passing the American Rescue Plan.

*Bloomberg contributed to this content

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