(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden said America is “back to work” and putting the Covid-19 pandemic behind it, after the labor market showed unexpected strength last month even as cases of the virus surged.
“America's job machine is going stronger than ever,” Biden said at the White House on Friday. He praised “the extraordinary resilience and grit of the American people, and American capitalism.”
Nonfarm payrolls jumped 467,000 in January, well over the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists that called for 125,000, though forecasts ranged widely. Previous months were also revised upward, adding to the gain. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4%, and average hourly earnings jumped.
Biden administration officials had also warned in recent days that the omicron variant of Covid would depress the numbers because brief absences from work could overstate the tally of unemployed people for last month.
Biden credited the American Rescue Plan, an aid package passed early in his presidency, and pointed to a sharp decline in Covid cases as evidence the country is moving past the virus. While cases and hospitalizations have fallen, the virus is still killing about 2,500 people in the U.S. each day.
“I know it hasn't been easy. I know that January was a very hard month for many Americans,” Biden said. “But here's the good news: We have the tools to save lives and to keep businesses open, keep schools open, keep workers on the job and sustain this historic economic comeback.”
The surprise display of strength suggests the labor market continues to improve, despite the temporary disruption from record-high levels of coronavirus infections and the resulting absenteeism from work. The data further reinforce Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's description last week of the labor market as “strong” and validate the central bank's intention to raise interest rates in March to combat the highest inflation in nearly 40 years.
Biden has routinely cited jobs data as proof of the robust recovery from the pandemic, and to downplay the impacts of another result of that rebound: soaring inflation that's become a political liability for Biden. Monthly data on price gains are due next week, with economists expecting the measure to remain high.
“That is the kind of recovery that we want to see,” Heather Boushey, a member of Biden's Council of Economic Advisers, told Bloomberg Television's “Balance of Power With David Westin” on Friday.
Boushey said the numbers resulted from broad-based growth. “That is really a testament to the strength of this recovery and the strength of, quite frankly, the policies we put in place -- 75% of Americans are fully vaccinated, businesses now know how to cope with the pandemic and we're able to get through this in a different way, at this point,” she said.
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