Joe Biden, U.S. President: “We, as we head into Labor Day weekend, we have more evidence of the progress of our economy from last year’s economic calamity. Today, we learned the economy created 235,000 new jobs in August and the unemployment rate fell to 5.2 percent, the lowest it has been in 18 months. But despite the impact of the delta variant and I’ll talk a little more about that in a minute. What we’re seeing is an economic recovery that’s durable and strong. The Biden plan is working. We’re getting results. America is on the move again. Today’s revision of previous months job gains with the revision of the July numbers. This report means that we have been adding an average of 750,000 jobs per month on average during the past three months. In the three months before I became president, well, we were adding 60,000 jobs a month. Total job creation in the first seven months of my administration is nearly double, double any prior first year president.”
“While I know some wanted to see a larger number today and so did I, what we’ve seen this year is the continued growth month after month in job creation. It’s not just that I’ve added more jobs than any first year president, in the first year of any president, it’s that we’ve added jobs in every single one of my first seven job reports. And wages are going up, some more jobs, some some months are fewer, some months more, but always adding jobs. This is the kind of growth that makes our economy stronger and consistent progress and not a boom or bust. Our economy grew the first half of this year at the fastest rate in about 40 years. We’re the only developed country in the world who, I’ll say that again, we’re the only developed country in the world whose economy is now bigger than it was before the pandemic.”
“Today’s report shows that the steps we’ve taken, passing the rescue plan and vaccinating 175 million people, make our economy capable of growing and adding jobs even in the face of this continuing Delta surge, a strength in our economy very different from the way things were last winter. There’s no question the delta variant is why today’s job report isn’t stronger. I know people were looking and I was hoping for a higher number.”
“The measures we’ve taken so far have brought America out of an economic freefall, steadied us and enabled us to grow our economy even as we combat, continue to combat COVID. We are adding jobs, not losing them. The fight against covid today is far different from the fight we were waging last winter.”
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