Good news for Joe Biden
In the year leading up to the midterms, you can expect a lot of preposterous Republican talking points and non-controversies that they hope will stick with the average middle of the road voter, especially since they can’t win on policy ideas alone. One thing they’re liable to shy away from, however, are actual jobs numbers or stock market records – both of which continue to peak to new highs throughout the Biden administration.
While the pandemic led many economic experts to retract their predictions for economic growth in December and suggest that an average of 375,000 new jobs would be created, the reality is more than twice that, with 807,000 new jobs created in the private sector last month. This is on top of what was already record job growth to almost full employment, with the lowest unemployment claims in over 50 years.
While people are quick to dismiss the American Rescue Plan as just basic housekeeping that was going to somehow happen no matter what – bear in mind that it’s largely due to the provisions in this bill that the US was able to recover so quickly from a massive pandemic – and not just recover but thrive at levels that surpass what the economy was like back in 2019 – which Republicans still like to wax nostalgic about.
To put it in perspective, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, a Trump appointee, welcomed the news: “Amid improving labor market conditions and very strong demand for workers, the economy has been making rapid progress toward maximum employment.” The Biden boom is here – and this is critical to our messaging as we go into 2022.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making