House Republicans spent Friday morning attacking President Joe Biden over the latest jobs numbers, suggesting the figures, which were slightly lower than predicted, constituted a failure.
The U.S. economy in fact added 559,000 jobs in May — more than double the number added the month before. The improving employment data comes as new unemployment claims have dropped to new pandemic lows in recent weeks, in the wake of Biden’s American Rescue Plan and a successful COVID-19 vaccination drive.
Though the new job totals were slightly below the economists’ predictions of around 650,000 new jobs, the unemployment rate dropped to 5.8 percent — better than those same economists’ 5.9 percent expectation. Continue reading.