Americans Get Back to Work, as Millions of New Jobs are Created

By Yehudit Garmaise

President Joe Biden said on Tuesday night that “Our economy came roaring back faster than anyone predicted,” and statistics released by the US Labor Department show that now is a great time to get a job.

The 1,474,000 Americans who collected jobless aid from the federal government the end of the first week in February was the lowest that number has been since March 14, 1970, the Labor Department said Friday.

The American unemployment rate stands at 4%, which is a historically low figure, and unemployment claims dropped by 18,000 last week, the Labor Department reported.

While 233,000 Americans filed for new unemployment benefits during the week that ended on Feb. 19, the number of jobless in the U.S. dropped to 215,000 for the week that ended on February 26, ABC reported.

In addition, the U.S. economy added 400,000 jobs just last month, according to financial data provided by the firm FactSet.

“Last year, our economy created over 6.5 million new jobs: more jobs created in one year than ever before in the history of the United States of America,” Biden said.

“The economy grew at a rate of 5.7% last year, which is the strongest growth rate in nearly 40 years: the first step in bringing fundamental change to our economy that hasn’t worked for the working people of this nation for too long.”

Although jobs are easy to come by, prices in the US are high. Inflation now stands at a 40-year high after 2021 showed a 7.5% increase compared to last year. The U.S. Federal Reserve has said it will attempt to cool down the economy by raising interest rates to slow down consumers’ current feverish borrowing and spending.