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Biden takes victory lap over jobs report, but are the numbers really cause for celebration?

May 7, 2022 | | Print Article

President Joe Biden is taking a victory lap as the April jobs report reveals the U.S. added 428,000 jobs last month, while the unemployment rate remained at 3.6%.

“Job growth was widespread, led by gains in leisure and hospitality, in manufacturing, and in transportation and warehousing,” according to a Friday release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

“Today, we learned that the economy created 428,000 jobs in April — bringing the total number of jobs created since I took office to 8.3 million: record setting job creation in my first 15 months in office,” said the president in a statement. “Our plans and policies have produced the strongest job creation economy in modern times.”

Biden called the steady 3.6% unemployment rate “the fastest decline in unemployment to start a President’s term ever recorded,” adding that in only three of the last 50 years has the unemployment rate been lower.

“This is a direct result of the American Rescue Plan, our COVID vaccination program, and my plan to grow our economy from the bottom up and middle out,” said Biden.

Hourly earnings, however, trailed estimates, reflecting just 0.3% growth, and, according to Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, the jobs report is nothing to celebrate.

“The latest jobs report doesn’t change anything for families suffering under Biden’s failed economic agenda that has resulted in sky-high inflation, soaring prices, and now a serious threat of a recession,” McDaniel said in a statement. “Families can’t afford food and groceries, wages can’t keep up with inflation, and Biden’s agenda is only going to make it worse.”

“Voters squarely blame Biden and the Democrats for the harm they are causing struggling families across the country,” she stated.

 

According to the RNC, “The jobs report shows that Bidenflation is shrinking workers’ paychecks, with rising prices eating up any wage growth.”

“There are still 1.1 million Americans who lost their job during the pandemic and have yet to get it back,” the RNC said, adding that unemployment rates “for Black men, Asians, Americans without a high school diploma, and Americans who attended some college all increased.”

The RNC also notes that “the U.S. economu shrank 1.4 percent on an annualized rate last quarter.”

“Biden inherited a robust recovery and is turning it into stagflation — even Biden’s own economists are warning of a recession,” the RNC states.

In his statement, Biden did acknowledge the challenges of inflation.

“There’s no question that inflation and high prices are a challenge for families across the country, and fighting inflation is a top priority for me,” Biden said. “The continued strength of our job market and the savings that families have built up over the last year means that our economy faces the challenges of COVID-19, Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and global inflation from a position of strength.”

The claim repeats, nearly word for word, those of NPR and other media outlets in April, amid news of the U.S. economy’s 1.4% contraction in the first quarter of 2022 — the first time the economy has shrunk since the start of the pandemic, according to a previous report in American Wire News.

Now, however, it seems the optimism is waning, despite Biden’s victory lap.

According to CNBC’s Rick Santelli, with Biden’s assault on oil and gas, “we’re all doomed to much slower economies down the road, period.”

Melissa Fine
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