President Joe Biden on Friday painted a more positive picture of the country and its economy by zooming out from the day’s disappointing jobs report and pointing to the overall progress made on jobs since he took office and blaming the evolving COVID-19 pandemic for some of the numbers.
The president spoke after the Labor Department’s monthly report showed only 194,000 jobs added in September and signs that companies of all types were still finding it hard to hire as the coronavirus pandemic surges on.
And while Biden admitted that progress wasn’t happening as fast as he would like due to the delta variant’s spread this summer, he urged people to look at the overall picture and the lower unemployment rate included in Friday’s report of 4.8%
“Jobs up, wages up,unemployment down — that’s progress,” he said. “It’s a tribute to the hard work and resilience of the American people who are battling through this pandemic, working to keep the businesses afloat.”
The president pointed to the few million jobs added to the economy since he took office, the funding still flowing from the pandemic relief bill passed in March, plus recent increases in COVID vaccinations and decreases in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.
“I want you to take a step back and look at what’s happening. We’re actually making real progress,” he said. “Maybe it doesn’t seem fast enough. I’d like to see it faster, and we’re going to make it faster.”
President Biden used the opportunity to speak on the jobs report as one to also highlight his domestic agenda, which is still being worked out among Democrats on Capitol Hill.
“The jobs numbers also remind us that we have important work ahead of us and important investments we need to make,” he said, warning that America risks losing its “edge.”
The president’s two part plan — a bipartisan infrastructure bill and the evolving social and climate spending legislation — is stalled while the second, larger piece is negotiated, and the president on Friday called it critical legislation to uplift the middle class, families and workers.
“We need to stay focused on the people,” he said.
One example he gave was the importance of early childhood education and the need to pass universal pre-K as well as an expansion of the child tax credit for families, both core parts of his Build Back Better plan.
Earlier this week, the president took those messages on the road to try and communicate his proposals directly to the American people, because while many of his policies are popular with Americans, they haven’t necessarily connected them to the president himself.
President Biden’s approval rating reached a new low in the last month according to a few pools, with a Yahoo News/YouGov survey showing him at 42% as of last week and Gallup’s regular polling putting him at 43% as of mid-September.
“Look, I would say that this is a really tough time in our country. We’re still battling COVID, and a lot of people thought we’d be through it, including us,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki admitted Friday when responding to a question about polling.
“As the President has said, the buck stops with him,” she added. “[The virus is] far and away the biggest issue on the minds of the American people, and it’s impacting a lot of issues.”
