The jobs report suggests President Biden is right about a recession.

The sturdy jobs report was welcome information for President Biden, who has insisted in current weeks that the USA just isn’t in recession, although it has suffered two consecutive quarters of financial contraction.

However the report additionally defied even the president’s personal optimistic expectations concerning the state of the labor market — and appeared to contradict the administration’s idea of the place the economic system is headed.

Mr. Biden celebrated the report on Friday morning. “Right this moment, the unemployment charge matches the bottom it’s been in additional than 50 years: 3.5 %,” he stated in a press release. “Extra individuals are working than at any level in American historical past.”

He added: “There’s extra work to do, however right this moment’s jobs report reveals we’re making important progress for working households.”

The president has stated for months that he expects job creation to gradual quickly, together with wage and value development, because the economic system transitions to a extra steady state of slower development and decrease inflation.

“If common month-to-month job creation shifts within the subsequent 12 months from present ranges of 500,000 to one thing nearer to 150,000,” Mr. Biden wrote in an opinion piece for The Wall Road Journal in Might, “will probably be an indication that we’re efficiently transferring into the subsequent part of restoration — as this type of job development is in keeping with a low unemployment charge and a wholesome economic system.”

White Home officers prepped reporters this week for the chance that job development was cooling, according to Mr. Biden’s expectations. The expectations-busting job creation quantity appeared to shock them, once more.

However Mr. Biden will nearly definitely cite the numbers as proof that the economic system is nowhere close to recession. He and his aides have repeatedly stated in current weeks that the present tempo of job creation is out of step with the roles numbers in earlier recessions, and proof {that a} contraction in gross home product doesn’t imply the nation is mired in a downturn.