Jobs! Jobs! Jobs !: Joe Biden finally gets some good news

It has been a challenging stretch too Joe Biden. His agenda has stalled on Capitol Hill, his polls are falling, and his party has just received a bad warning at Tuesday’s election outside the year. But his week ends with a bit of good news, which should, among other things, show the importance of his more aggressive strategy to fight back the coronavirus pandemic.

The Department of Labor announced Friday that the economy added 531,000 jobs in October, a major improvement over the previous month and a reflection, as it appears, of the improved COVID situation in the United States. “This is the kind of improvement we can get when we are not on the sidelines of an increase in COVID cases,” Nick Bunker, said economic research director at Indeed, to CNN.

In September, when the delta variant raged across most of the country, the United States added only 194,000 jobs, far below expectations. The marked recovery in Friday’s report underscores the extent to which the US economic recovery remains linked to the pandemic. Cases have fallen sharply nationwide in recent weeks, and there have been reasons for optimism with the expansion of booster shots and the opening of vaccinations to children as young as five. Biden announced the strong economic numbers on Friday, but warned that further gains would require continued progress against the virus. “In order for our economy to recover fully,” Biden said in comments on job numbers Friday, “we need to keep driving vaccinations up and COVID down.”

Biden – who also renewed calls on Congress to adopt his infrastructure plans and said the bills would lower inflation, which has hampered an otherwise improved economy – is becoming even more confident in his vaccination push. On Thursday, he announced that his administration would require companies with more than 100 employees to order inoculation or frequent testing by January 4 – a plan that would cover about two-thirds of the U.S. workforce, according to the White House. “Although I would very much have preferred the requirements not to become necessary,” Biden said Thursday, “far too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic forever.”

It provoked a new round of right-wing outrage, and several red states, which tend to have lower vaccination levels, launched a legal battle against the new rules. But the number of jobs seems to support Biden’s argument that such mandates are necessary not only as a public health measure, but to continue economic recovery. “They help send people back to work,” Biden said. “They make our economy more resilient to COVID and keep our businesses open.” The COVID situation is, of course, unpredictable. But measures that could continue to reduce infections, hospitalizations and deaths – and the promise of new treatments like the pill, as Pfizer said on Friday, severely reduced severe COVID outcomes – could continue to boost economic optimism.

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