Employers added 194,000 jobs last month. The unemployment rate fell to 4.8 percent, from 5.2 percent in August. It fell for good reasons, not bad — the number of people unemployed dropped by a whopping 710,000 while the number of people working rose by a robust 526,000.
This represents a remarkably speedy recovery in the labor market — attaining sub-5 percent unemployment a mere 17 months after the end of the deepest recession in modern times. By contrast, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the jobless rate did not reach 4.8 percent until January 2016, six and a half years after the technical end of that recession.
The fast recovery can be explained by two factors: The unusual nature of a pandemic-induced recession and the highly aggressive response of fiscal policymakers to the crisis. The result is that jobs are abundant and most people who want to work can.
The economy has created nearly five million jobs in the first eight months of the Biden administration — nearly twice as many jobs created in the first eight months than any administration in history.
In order to keep our economy on the upswing, we need to keep getting people vaccinated and pass the rest of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. We call on all Americans to get vaccinated to help combat Covid and help grow our economy.
Source: NY Times, Upshot
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