Biden Economic Adviser Bernstein: ‘Very Hard to Conclude’ if U.S. in a Recession

White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein said on this week’s “Fox News Sunday” broadcast that despite record inflation, it was “very hard” to conclude we were in a recession.

Bernstein said, “Payroll and consumer spending are actually very strong on the payroll side and strong on the spending side as well. In fact, one of the things we are seeing is people are traveling a lot. They are kind of taking up some of that pent-up demand they didn’t get to tap during the downturn, during the pandemic. That’s contributing to strong consumer spending, strong retail sales, job growth, an unemployment rate of 3.6% for the past four months.”

He added, “It is very hard to conclude that we are in a recession when you look at the payroll and the job gains that we’ve seen. Now, it is tricky to look around the corner here. I’m not going to predict quarters down the road, but right now, you’ve got inflation headwinds big time in this economy, not taking anything away from that. But you also have some very strong tailwinds that are boosting consumers. Now, some of that has the American Rescue Plan’s fingerprints all over that. Especially the fact that families, at least on aggregate, have quite solid balance sheets, businesses as well.”

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