So much for doom and gloom
While the news media has been conditioning us to expect the worst for the beginning of 2022 – an almost certainly terrible jobs report for January owing to the Omicron variant, the news that broke on Friday was in fact the exact opposite. Yet again, the economy added considerably more jobs than economists predicted it would – an additional 467,000 which is over three times the 125,000 figure that was expected, while overall wages rose by half a point, slightly more than they were expected to.
What’s also significant is that the hospitality industry, expected to suffer the most, continued to see growth despite the Omicron wave. This is a good trend to see particularly now as Omicron cases are beginning to drop off.
The jobs report is significant for another, greater reason. This is the first time in American history that the White House has presided over the creation of over seven million jobs in just a 12-month period, as corrections from previous jobs reports in November and December added over 750,000 jobs.
America is back thanks to a thriving economy and prospective Democratic candidates for office this year would do well to run on this record while calling out Republicans who have so far voted against President Biden’s agenda every step of the way. It’s fair to say that America is back and headed in the right direction as we recover from the pandemic, and this is why we need to elect Democrats across the board in 2022.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making