US jobs growth & the political hit on Biden | TICKER VIEWS

By Bruce Wolpe. Senior Fellow at the United States Studies Centre and Ticker News US political contributor

The big economic news at the end of the week, as reported by the Wall Street Journal:

“Hiring in the U.S. unexpectedly slowed in April, a sign the nation’s recovery from the pandemic still faces challenges as many businesses struggle to find workers or remain cautious about the economic outlook.

U.S. employers added a modest 266,000 jobs in April, a report Friday by the Labor Department showed, far short of the one million that economists had forecast and the weakest monthly gain since January.

The deceleration came after payrolls rose a downwardly revised 770,000 in March and left total employment down by 8.2 million from its pre-pandemic level.”

The White House was expecting jobs growth of close to 1 million for April, so this news was a real hit on expectations. 

For Republicans, the message was: workers are not coming back because the government support they receive is too generous. 

And they know that poor economic news is bad for Biden’s standing.

Biden was having none of it. 

“When we passed the American Rescue Plan, I want to remind everybody, it was designed to help us over the course of a year, not 60 days. A year. We never thought that after the first 50 or 60 days everything would be fine.

Joe Biden – US PRESIDENT

Today, there’s more evidence that our economy is moving in the right direction. But it’s clear we have a long way to go.

All told, our economy has added more than 1,500,000 new jobs since I took office. That’s the most number of jobs created in the first three months of any presidency in our history,” the President said.

This places even greater urgency on Biden’s getting Congress to approve his $2 trillion infrastructure plan.  It is another make-or-break moment. 

If Republicans can stop it — and the Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has said exactly that is what he intends to do —  Biden will hit a ceiling in what he can win in Washington. 

If he can succeed, Biden will  have more political capital with voters across the country.  So there is a lot at stake.  

We should know by July 4 if this key legislation can at least pass the House of Representatives.

Read more about Biden’s contributions here.