President Biden said Friday that he bears no responsibility for the country’s ongoing inflation crisis while highlighting a better-than-expected January jobs report.
The U.S. economy added 517,000 jobs in January, more than double what was expected.
“Do you take any blame for inflation?” one reporter asked.
Biden responded, “No.”
He said, “Remember what the economy was like when I got here? Jobs were hemorrhaging, inflation was rising. We weren’t manufacturing a damn thing here. We were in real economic difficulty. That’s why I don’t.”
When President Biden took office in January 2021, the consumer price index was 1.4%. The most recent inflation reading was 6.5% year on year in December 2022.
The Heritage Foundation examined consumer prices and interest rates and discovered in their most recent report, released Thursday, that the average American household has lost the equivalent of $7,400 in annual income since Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021.
The income loss is up $200 from September when the think tank found a $7,200 drop in annual income for the average American household dating back to the start of Biden’s presidency.
Over the last year, Fed policymakers voted seven times in a row to raise interest rates to a range of 4.25% to 4.5%.
Economists anticipate another rate hike when the Federal Reserve’s rate-setting committee concludes its two-day meeting on February 1.
Despite the ongoing battle to keep inflation under control, the job market made a surprising comeback in January.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: ANC To Appeal Cadre Deployment Ruling
Employers added 517,000 jobs in January, according to the Labor Department’s monthly payroll report released Friday, easily exceeding Refinitiv economists’ forecast of 185,000 jobs.
It was the best month for job growth since July. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 3.4%, the lowest level since 1969.
