The September Jobs Report wasn’t as grand as the Biden administration expected. On Friday, Oct. 8, the president addressed the nation to explain the market and his expectations going forward. However, he didn’t say too much about the disappointing numbers from the jobs report and instead concentrated on his plans to Build Back Better. Oh, and he turned his back on the audience without answering a single question.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) hinted at the dissatisfaction from the report on Twitter:
“The September jobs report is additional proof of the need for @HouseDemocrats’ job-creating #BuildBackBetter agenda. While historic progress to create jobs, lower unemployment and defeat the pandemic has been forged, more must be done to protect families’ financial security.”
Biden started off the meeting with a pat on his back. “Today’s report has your employment rate down to 4.8%, a significant improvement from when I took office … the sign of our recovery is moving forward, even in the face of a COVID pandemic.” The president explained that the unemployment rate for African Americans fell almost a full percent, to below 8% for the first time in 17 months. “For the past three months we’ve seen a drop of 1.3 million long-term unemployed,” he continued. “That’s the largest three months for long-term unemployment since we started keeping records in 1948.”
Mr. Biden claimed layoffs and job reductions were the lowest in the country since 1997 and that the unemployment “report shows almost 200,000 jobs were created last month, over 300,000 in the private sector.” He added that “on average, 600,000 new jobs were created every month since I took office.”
Joe Biden
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
However, as Liberty Nation’s Andrew Moran said, “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the U.S. labor market added 194,000 new jobs in September, the lowest reading in 2021. Financial analysts had anticipated 500,000 new positions.”
Biden then transitioned into praising the bipartisan work for clearing the debt ceiling limit and segued into how many more Americans have been vaccinated recently. “[M]ore than 186 million Americans are now fully vaccinated, more than 75% of those Americans have gotten at least one shot and COVID cases are down 40%. In the past month, hospitalizations are down over 25%.”
Families with children will receive a tax break, Biden explained, “which, as I speak, is providing monthly checks.” Families with children under the age of seven receive $300 per child and those with kids 17 and younger will receive $250 per minor.
After boasting about helping firefighters and hospital staff get back to work by bankrolling paychecks, Biden switched into promotion gear, trying to drum up more support for his infrastructure bill. “We used to be the best in the world” regarding infrastructure, the president said, adding that according to the World Economic Forum, “the United States of America ranks third in the world.” The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, according to Biden, ranked America 35 out of 37 major economies. “We’ve taken, taking our foot off the gas and the world has taken notice, including our adversaries, and now they’re closing the gap,” he declared, then said China has spent three times as much as the U.S. on infrastructure.
A brief switch to the automobile industry had Biden telling the American people that the future of that business is electric and that America should be making the vehicles and the batteries to power them. “We need to make sure America builds that future instead of falling behind,” he exclaimed. “We should build those vehicles, and the batteries that go into it.”
Some may find it ironic, since the president ordered the chaotic withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and China swooped in to try and get its hands on the vast minerals in that country, including lithium, which is used to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles.
After being late by more than an hour, Biden’s speech was nothing unexpected, or even new. It resembled another attempt to promote the need for clean energy and climate change programs as well as his beloved infrastructure bill.
~ Read more from Kelli Ballard.
