President Joe Biden put a positive spin on September’s disappointing jobs report, focusing on a better unemployment rate despite fewer jobs being added to the economy than anticipated.
“Today’s report has the unemployment rate down to 4.8%, a significant improvement from when I took office and a sign that our recovery is moving forward, even in the face of the COVID pandemic,” Biden said Friday at the White House. “Jobs up, wages up, unemployment down. That’s progress.”
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During his address, which was delayed by 83 minutes, the president reminded critics that the Labor Department data were based on surveys taken during the week of Sept. 13, when the country was recording roughly 150,000 COVID-19 cases a day.
“The monthly totals bounce around, but if you take a look at the trend, it’s solid,” he said, at one point wiping his nose.
Biden alluded to a “noisy” Washington, a day after Senate Democrats accepted a deal with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to increase the Treasury Department’s ability to borrow money until about December, avoiding the country’s first default. He also used the platform to push for his $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal and $3.5 trillion social welfare and climate proposal.
“Right now, things in Washington, as you all know, are awfully noisy,” he said. “Turn on the news and every conversation is a confrontation, every disagreement is a crisis. But when you take a step back and look at what’s happening, we’re actually making real progress.”
He added: “Maybe it doesn’t seem fast enough.”
Labor Secretary Marty Walsh conceded before Biden’s remarks that the administration still had “work to do.” Walsh blamed the delta variant for fewer “people going to shops and restaurants.”
“So there’s concerns around that,” he told Fox News before becoming more defiant. “The unemployment rate is below 5%. And it took us until 2016 to get to that number in the Great Recession.”
White House chief of staff Ron Klain also previewed Biden’s speech by amplifying a New York Times piece that emphasized the second half of 2021’s supposed “steady” economic expansion, which has been “more rapid than other recent recoveries.”
“The jobs numbers are pretty good actually,” Klain tweeted, quoting the newspaper’s headline.
The economy added 194,000 jobs in September. It was the second straight month of lower than expected job growth after economists predicted there would be an extra 500,000 positions. The unemployment rate last month did dip to 4.8% though, down from 5.2% in August.
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September’s numbers represent a downward trend in job growth after 366,000 jobs were added in August and more than 1 million jobs in July. Bars and restaurants, which have been driving the economic pandemic bounce back, notched another soft month.
