The U.S. economy is cooling off after a hot post-pandemic expansion. While that’s helping to take the bite out of inflation, it’s not doing the president or his party many political favors.
Biden’s approval rating has hit record lows as high interest rates and flatlining inflation squeeze Americans.
Declines in job gains and wage growth reflected in Friday’s jobs report may help fight inflation, but they also leave the administration with fewer tools to tout the economy on the campaign trail.
The job market slowdown “partly explains why job seekers and new hires are feeling more stressed out than they have in over a year,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.
“Rising financial strain, paired with declining worker leverage, are taking their toll,” she said.
The U.S. economy has added 14 million jobs since Biden took office in January 2021.
While millions of those jobs were a result of the pandemic recovery that started before Biden’s election, the president has touted the impact of “Bidenomics” on the labor market.
More than 150,000 jobs were added last month, and the unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 3.9 percent. That’s still more than enough jobs to keep the U.S. economy out of recession, experts say.
“The economy needs to add only 75,000 jobs a month—compared with 200,000 a decade ago—to stabilize employment given demographic changes,” wrote Joseph Brusuelas, chief U.S. economist at audit and tax firm RSM, in a Friday analysis.
But Biden’s approval rating has dipped to 37 percent, around the lowest mark of his presidency, according to a Gallup poll released last week.
Among Democrats, support for Biden plunged 11 percentage points to a new record low of 75 percent.
Biden and top Democrats have blamed the media and Republicans for feeding Americans’ economic pessimism.
The Hill’s Sylvan Lane has more here.
