The "road" is still "long," warned Joe Biden.
According to the American president, the country has not yet recovered from the economic crisis due to the Covid-19 pandemic and needs the gigantic investment plans he announced to boost employment there, he said. he pleaded Friday, May 7.
"We are still emerging from an economic collapse," responded Joe Biden from the White House.
“Clearly, we still have a long way to go,” he added, noting that the country had “8 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic”.
Only 266,000 jobs were created in April, a far cry from the expected million.
The unemployment rate even rose for the first time in nearly a year, to 6.1% (+0.1 point), announced the Department of Labor.
Therefore, it "shows that the actions we are taking are vital. (...) Our efforts are starting to bear fruit. But the slope is steep," warned the US president.
Joe Biden has been defending for months the need to invest nearly $ 4 trillion over the next decade - including more than $ 2 trillion in infrastructure - to create jobs, especially for the least skilled workers.
>> Inequalities, climate: Biden's investment plan for a "benevolent" America
"Why take a job today
?"
The Republican opposition immediately saw these employment figures as a failure of the President's policy.
It is "a clear message to say that the political measures of Joe Biden do not work", thus commented the group of the Republican senators on their account Twitter.
For them, the reason is to be found on the side of unemployment benefits, the duration of which has been extended until the end of August and the amount raised by 300 dollars per week.
This "pushes people more to stay at home than to work," they vilified.
Many employers say they are struggling to find candidates, despite the 16 million unemployed and self-employed who still received unemployment benefit in mid-April.
The fear of contracting Covid-19 remains present and childcare difficulties persist until schools are fully reopened.
And many unemployed people take advantage of the aid to take their time and find a more satisfactory job, looking for a position allowing teleworking according to economists.
Employers try to attract recruits with higher wages.
The increase in the private sector was 3% in the first quarter compared to the first quarter of 2020, according to figures from the Department of Labor.
The state of Montana (northwest) offers 1,200 dollars to unemployed people who accept a job.
Extended unemployment benefits "are set to expire in September, but maybe people think jobs will be just as easy to find as they are now, so why take a job today?" Notes Ian Shepherdson, economist for Pantheon Macroeconomics.
However, he said he was "convinced that the demand for labor should increase further in the coming months".
Leisure comes back to life
Because US economic activity is gradually coming out of its slumber, and many economists argue that the data is very volatile from one month to the next.
"This strange report on employment is not a reliable indicator of the state of the labor market," said economist Joel Naroff in a note.
Nearly one in three Americans is now fully vaccinated, and many household purses are full thanks to government aid and after a year without gym memberships or trips halfway around the world. .
Companies in the hotel, leisure and service sectors, which had been devastated by the pandemic, are coming back to life in particular as Americans get vaccinated: these sectors alone created 375,000 jobs last month.
But those gains have been partially wiped out by losses in business services, as a return to the office is yet to be seen for many white-collar workers.
More than 22 million jobs were destroyed in March and April 2020, under the effect of the first containment measures, including some 8 million that have still not been recreated.
The unemployment rate had fallen in two months from its lowest level in 50 years (3.5% in February) to a highest since the Great Depression of the 1930s (14.8% in April).
The US Central Bank expects an unemployment rate of 4.5% at the end of the year.
With AFP
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