Biden calls jobless rate falling to 4.8% a 'significant improvement' since he took office
After the Department of Labor showed the unemployment rate dropping to 4.8 percent in September, President Biden called the figure a “significant improvement” since he took office in January.
Video Transcript
JOE BIDEN: Good afternoon, everyone. Today, for the first time since March of 2020, the American unemployment rate is below 5%. In just eight months, since I became president in the midst of a grave public health and economic crisis, the unemployment rate is now down below 5%, at 4.8%. Let me just repeat that. Today's report has the unemployment rate down to 4.8%, a significant improvement from when I took office, and a sign that our recovery is moving forward, even in the face of a COVID pandemic.
That improvement was widespread. Unemployment for Hispanic workers was down. And the unemployment rate for African-Americans fell almost a full percent. And it's now below 8% for the first time in 17 months. A drop of 496,000 in long-term unemployment is the second largest single month drop since we started keeping records. The largest was in July. So in the past three months, we've seen a drop of 1.3 million long-term unemployed. That's the largest three-month fall in long-term unemployment since we started keeping records in 1948.
More to do, but great progress. And working Americans are seeing their paychecks go up as well. In September, we saw one of the largest increases in average wages paid to workers on a-- working Americans on record. Today's report comes one day after the Labor Department found, in the third quarter of this year, the number of layoffs and job reductions was the lowest in this country since 1997.
Overall, the unemployment report shows almost 200,000 jobs were created last month, over 300,000 in the private sector and 26,000 in manufacturing, offset by some seasonal adjustments in education hiring. The monthly total has bounced around. But if you take a look at the trend, it's solid. On average, 600,000 new jobs created every month since I took office. And in the three months before I got there, that was 1/10 what was being created.
It's 60-- 60,000, as opposed to 600,000 jobs a month. In total, the job creation in the first eight months of my administration is nearly 5 million jobs. Jobs up. Wages up. Unemployment down. That's progress.
