On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Chris Jansing Reports,” Senior Adviser to President Joe Biden Gene Sperling responded to a survey showing that a majority of CEOs expect a recession in the next 18 months by stating that “we think that too many people are not looking at the more reassuring elements of resilience in this economy right now and they’re not realizing that the American Rescue Plan put a historic number of people back to work.”
Host Chris Jansing asked, “So, look, because of fuel prices, it’s fueling inflation, there are concrete fears of a recession. There was one survey recently that said 60% of CEOs expect a recession in the next year or year-and-a-half. The president believes a recession is not inevitable. Is that his natural optimism or based on something you can share with us?”
Sperling responded, “I think we think that too many people are not looking at the more reassuring elements of resilience in this economy right now and they’re not realizing that the American Rescue Plan put a historic number of people back to work. People have called it the great return to work. You know, today, we just got out state unemployment numbers. There are 30 states in the United States where their unemployment rate is already below [what] it was before the pandemic hit. That’s remarkable progress and 15 of those states are at the lowest level of unemployment ever.”
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