Strong job gains buoy Biden’s economic push
Friday’s stronger-than-expected jobs report added new fuel to a relentless White House messaging campaign that has cited a flurry of recent data points as evidence that President Joe Biden’s economic agenda is working.
Biden pointed to both the job growth and wage increases as signs that his policies are helping the economy to recover from the pandemic downturn. Average hourly earnings climbed by 3.6% in the year through June and 0.3% over the month, matching what economists in a Bloomberg survey had expected.
As the nation prepares to celebrate Independence Day this weekend, Biden said, “Today’s job news brought us something else to celebrate.” Biden said the pace of job gains was helping to “flip the script” in the labor market, with employers now being forced to compete for workers by raising pay and offering other perks.
“That kind of competition in the market doesn’t just give workers more ability to earn higher wages,” he said. “It gives them the power to
demand to be treated with dignity and respect in the workplace. More jobs, better wages. That’s a good combination.”
Administration officials have been aggressively touting new projections from the Internal Monetary Fund and the Congressional Budget Office that suggest the economy will grow at its fastest pace in a quarter-century this year and that price pressures will not spiral out of control. They have also pointed to falling claims for unemployment benefits as a sign of labor market healing.
But they had been stuck in a slump of sorts on the jobs report.
Friday’s report follows two months of job gains that fell short of analyst expectations, prompting criticism of Biden from Republicans. Lawmakers said the $1.9 trillion economic aid bill the president signed in March was holding back the recovery by extending supplemental benefits for unemployed workers through September, which some businesses blame for difficulties in hiring workers, and stoking rapid inflation.
On Thursday, Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee taunted Biden in advance, in a news release headlined “After two underwhelming jobs reports, President Biden’s June report is make or break.”
The details of Friday’s report were not across-theboard strong for the administration. They showed a labor force that is only slowly expanding, even as millions more potential workers receive coronavirus vaccines. Administration officials had predicted workers would flock back to jobs once they were vaccinated.
But other details could support the administration’s theory of the recovery. An accelerating rebound in leisure and hospitality particularly in food service, which powered much of the gains for June could reflect surging demand from vaccinated consumers who have more disposable income thanks to direct payments from the federal government as part of Biden’s economic aid bill.
States and localities also appear to have avoided new waves of layoffs, as reflected in rising state and local education employment. Biden’s bill spent $350 billion on aid to states, localities and tribal governments, though in the case of many states, their fiscal outlook was already improving even before the aid arrived.