President Joe Biden on Friday praised the latest jobs report as “great news for American workers and families” while economists have offered mixed reactions to the new numbers.
“Today, we learned our economy gained over 250,000 new jobs in September and unemployment is back down at 4.1 percent,” Biden wrote in a statement on X. “With today’s report, we’ve created 16 million jobs, unemployment remains low, and wages are growing faster than prices.”
The United States added 254,000 jobs in September, far exceeding expectations, while the unemployment rate fell from 4.2 percent in August to 4.1 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The president said Congress should now focus on the plan to lower costs by building millions of homes, capping prescription drug prices, and cutting taxes.
Biden later answered questions from reporters and spoke about the job numbers on Friday at his first press briefing at the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House since taking office.
Stephen Stanley, chief economist at the banking company Santander, believes the report is an encouraging sign of a solid job market.
“There’s still more momentum than we had given it credit for,” Stanley said. “I would call it solid—certainly not as explosive as what we were seeing last year or the year before, when we were catching up from the pandemic. But the pace of job growth overall is very healthy.’’
But Jeffrey Tucker, founder and president of the Brownstone Institute, told NTD News on Friday that he was more skeptical of the first read of the jobs report. He said the numbers will be revised as more comprehensive information becomes available.
The new data, nonetheless, has implications for the Federal Reserve’s next move.
“The headline has got everybody all fired up and what that does is diminish pressure on the Federal Reserve to lower rates any time soon,” Tucker said in an interview with NTD following the release of the September jobs report.
The Federal Reserve last month cut interest rates by a half percentage point. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said of the decision that inflation is “much closer” to its two percent target and the labor market is “less tight” than pre-pandemic in 2019.
“To my mind, the Fed has embarked on a very dangerous course,” Tucker said. “When you have the Federal Reserve driving down interest rates at a time like this, it’s only going to fuel a second round of inflation. In fact, based on what we are seeing from real-time numbers, that is already happening. And it’s gravely worrying.”
The economy has emerged as a top issue among voters in the 2024 presidential election.
“It’s a major issue for me,” Christine Renee, California resident and bar manager, told NTD News. “A bad economy means less spending. And less spending means less customers.”
As a restaurant employee, Renee said that she’s concerned with job security if the economy doesn’t fully bounce back from pre-pandemic levels soon.
According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in September, 81 percent of registered voters say the economy will be very important to their vote in the 2024 race.