WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Friday touted the unexpectedly high employment gains in September’s jobs report in remarks at the White House.
The U.S. added about 336,000 jobs in September, nearly twice the Dow Jones prediction of 170,000 jobs and above the monthly average of 267,000 jobs over the past year, according to the newly released report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate in September stayed the same at 3.8%.
“My dad had an expression. He said, ‘Joey, a job’s about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect. It’s about being able to look your kid in the eye and say, ‘Honey, it’s going to be okay, and mean it,”” Biden said. “Well, 336,000 more Americans, if they have children, can say that to their children and mean it.”
Biden credited the positive jobs report to his economic policies, which his administration has dubbed “Bidenomics.”
“It’s no accident. It’s Bidenomics,” Biden said. “We’re growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down.”
The job gains took place in the leisure and hospitality, government, and health care industries, among others. The labor force participation rate — which includes those working or looking for work — also remained steady at 62.8%.
The news comes as the White House announced the third Investing in America tour, intended “to highlight how Bidenomics is growing the economy from the bottom up and middle out in communities across the country,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in Thursday’s press briefing.
As part of the tour, senior administration officials, as well as the president and vice president, will traverse the country, “making dozens of stops in the coming two weeks,” the White House said in a news release.
Biden also noted that Friday is National Manufacturing Day, which celebrates those who work in the U.S. manufacturing sector.
“For too long, too many of us have been told to give up on American manufacturing. I will never do that,” Biden said in White House proclamation Thursday. “We are living through one of the greatest industrial revivals in our Nation’s history. There is no one that America cannot outcompete.”
The president slammed House GOP’s economic agenda, which he claimed had brought the U.S. to “the brink of a government shutdown, creating unnecessary instability and risk in order to secure more extreme cuts in programs that help working Americans and seniors.” He urged House Republicans to “stop fooling around.”
“It’s time for you to do your job, continue our progress growing the economy, investing in America, investing in the American people,” Biden said.
Biden has recently been struggling with lagging poll numbers on his handling of the economy. In a September NBC poll, only 37% of voters approved of how he has handled the economy, while 28% of voters said they were satisfied with the state of the economy.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
