President Joe Biden sounded a dark note on the future of the economy Friday, after a bleak jobs report came out.
The United States economy added 49,000 jobs in December with only 6,000 jobs in the private sector, according to the latest report released Friday morning.
“At that rate, it’s going to take ten years to get back to full employment,” Biden said. “That’s not hyperbole, that’s a fact.”
The president spoke while meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats in the Oval Office to discuss his $1.9 trillion coronavirus spending plan.
“This is about people’s lives, it’s not just about numbers,” he said, noting the rise in mental health cases, drug abuse, and suicides in the United States.
Biden thanked Senate Democrats for passing a budget reconciliation bill to move his plan forward with a simple majority.
“People are really feeling the hole; they don’t know how to get out,” he said. “You’ve given them a lot of hope.”
Biden vowed he would speed the American recovery with the glut of new spending, again explaining why he wanted to err on the side of spending too much rather than too little.
“We can fix it. We can fix it,” he said. “And the irony of all ironies is, when we help them we are also helping our competitive capacity for the remainder of this decade.”