WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden is demanding a page from his predecessor’s flashy manners and acknowledging credit for two months of job creation, as employers are bringing back many workers set aside by the pandemic. Although his numbers are correct, it is a misleading portrait.
PRAYER: “The first two months of our administration created us more jobs than the first two months of any government in American history.” remarks to the Congolese members of the Asian-American and Pacific on Friday
THE FACTS: Yes, but records are not what they used to be. The pandemic led to unprecedented economic losses and gains. In this uproar, President Donald Trump was also able to claim record progress on some economic markers when the virus began to decline last year, only to come back.
Biden thanked lawmakers for supporting the $ 1,400 relief package that helped most Americans and others, saying the gains were “for all of you.” But the numbers praised by Biden also reflect the easing of state and local business restrictions that, according to his government, are relaxed too early in some cases.
When some public health experts asked the government to send more vaccines to Michigan to help with infections, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the “answer is to really close things down.”
The pandemic brought about such a rapid and deep recession that almost all the data over the past year was unprecedented. The same goes for the first two months of Biden’s presidency: employers added nearly 1.4 million jobs in March and April, which was impressive to some extent.
But that is at least in part a function of the huge losses that occurred in March and April last year, when an unprecedented 22.4 million jobs were reduced within two months. And despite the strong gains Biden cited, there are still 8.4 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic, almost as many jobs as were lost in the Great Recession of 2008-2009.
The appointment has accelerated over the past two months as vaccinations have increased, states and cities have eased business restrictions and Americans have begun to take more risks. Biden’s $ 1.9 billion relief package, approved in March with its major stimulus surveys, is likely to help boost the economy and potentially encourage rents.
Attempts by the Trump administration to accelerate vaccine development could also earn credit. But rents have been strong over the past two months, in part because they have fallen so far so far.
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