President Joe Biden was upbeat as the Labor Department gave him good news after months of high unemployment levels due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The figures released by them showed that 531,000 jobs non farm were added in the month of October. Reuters poll of economists had estimated 450,00 jobs for October.
The unemployment rate in October stood at 4.6 percent from an earlier 4.8 percent. This beat the median estimate that was of a 4.7 percent rate. This is the lowest level since the economy began recovering from May 2020.
This was a real shot in the arm for President Biden as he continues to tackle poor elections results in the past week as well continued resistance to COVID-19 shots by some sections of the American labor force.
President Biden spoke at the White House, today. He said that America was getting back to work and that “our economy” has started “to work for more Americans.” He also noted that the economic plan that they had put through in Congress earlier in the year and the successful vaccine deployment that they had carried out had resulted in the nation being able to add jobs at a record pace.
President Biden said that there was a lot more to be done. However, he also said that the recovery was “faster”, “stronger”. and “fair” and “wider” than all the predictions. He said that he wanted to make sure that the recovery was “fully felt” by all Americans.
He also urged the House to pass both the pending bills: the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the climate and safety net bill immediately. The recent gubernatorial loss in Virginia has caused some panic among the Democrats on the Hill. They seem to have realized that the legislation needs to be passed soon.
There was a rally of U.S. and European shares and on November 4 and the dollar index hit a one-year peak. As the summer COVID infections due to the delta variant have been subsiding and the numbers who were getting vaccinated are slowly increasing, economic activity is getting back some of its momentum, early in Q4.
Image Credit Joe Biden
