President Biden is on Track to Create More Jobs Than Any President in History as Dozens of States See Lowest Ever Unemployment Rates


     8.3 million jobs in 15 months. If you can't remember that many jobs being created in such a short period of time, it's because it has never happened before. The president who created the most jobs in his time in office, Bill Clinton, created jobs at half the rate President Biden is creating them right now: 23 million in eight years. That's an average of 550,000 jobs per month for President Biden, compared to 250,000 for President Clinton. Of course, the rate will slow down. However, at the current rate, President Biden will create 12 million jobs in his first two years, which is a tremendous head start that would put him behind only Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Clinton in the number of jobs created. Even if job growth slows down drastically, America can expect 18 million new jobs by 2025; a second term would give President Biden a clear path to create more jobs than any president in history.

     A total of 18 states are currently at or have recently seen their lowest unemployment rates ever recorded, including my home state of Wisconsin. Nebraska's unemployment rate even hit 1.8 percent, the lowest rate ever recorded by any state ever. At least as many states are less than one point away from record low unemployment rates: my guess is that 40 out of 50 states will see their lowest unemployment rates during the Biden years.

     It's time to declare war on unemployment. Aside from bringing the nation as a whole all the jobs it lost during the pandemic, we need to make sure each and every state recovers all the jobs they lost. States like Utah, Idaho, Texas, and Arizona have not only recovered all the jobs they lost, but created hundreds of thousands more.

     Race and ethnicity is a factor, as well. The current unemployment rate is 3.6 percent for the nation as a whole while unemployment claims are at their lowest in 50 years. The unemployment rate for black Americans is 5.9 percent; 4.1 percent for Hispanic Americans; 3.2 percent for Asian Americans; and 3.1 percent for white Americans. The jobless levels for black and Hispanic Americans are now beneath what they were before the pandemic hit. The record lows for each ethnicity are as follows: 3.9 percent for Hispanic Americans, 5.5 percent for black Americans; and 2.1 percent for Asian Americans. I am fully confident the Hispanic and black unemployment rates will hit record lows this year. The Asian unemployment rate will take more work, but is still within reach. Also worth noting is that the veteran unemployment rate will hit a record low this year.

     Most importantly, we need to focus on industry-by-industry unemployment. President Biden signed the Dr. Lorna Breen Act investing hundreds of millions of dollars in mental health for employees in the medical profession; he should also sign the Workplace Violence Prevention for Healthcare and Social Services Workers Act. The trucking industry is experiencing unprecedented growth with Secretary Buttigieg's National Trucking Action Plan. Small businesses and farmers are seeing a record boom. One other critical shortage is teaching. Last year was the best hiring year for teachers ever, but by far was not nearly enough. The STEM Teacher Hiring Initiative, better known as 100kin10, launched by President Obama in 2011 was completed last year with the hiring of 110,000 teachers over the decade, 10 percent above the goal. President Biden should relaunch this initiative with a new goal for 2030, 2035, or 2040 and work on a Department of Education initiative to address the teacher shortage.

     President Biden's economic agenda is building a better America. The American Rescue Plan Act brought the nation back from a global pandemic; the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act made the first major investment in the infrastructure that drives our economy in half a century, and the Bipartisan Innovation Act and Ocean Shipping Reform Act will strengthen America's supply chains and bring back American research, manufacturing, and competition. Meanwhile, as this critical work continues, Democrats will focus on lowering costs by passing the BIA, securing thousands of dollars in savings for each American family via the 2023 budget, passing the Affordable Insulin Now Act to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month, cancelling student debt for countless millions of Americans, empowering the FTC and Federal Reserve, and more. We also need to pass the Build Back Better Agenda, starting with the social safety net bill and then securing the votes necessary to pass either a bipartisan or reconciliation bill that will secure American energy independence and fight climate change.

     We have a lot of work ahead of us. However, in the meantime, more people are working now than any time during the Trump administration and the triple threat of Striketober, the unionization movement, and the Great Resignation is boosting wages. We can, we will, and we must Build Back Better.

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