Biden says jobs figures represent ‘steady progress’

President BidenJoe BidenArkansas lawmakers advance bill prohibiting businesses from demanding workers’ vaccine status Senate approves short-term debt ceiling increase On The Money — Presented by NRHC — Senate slowly walks back from debt disaster MORE on Friday described the September jobs report as a sign of steady progress in the United States’ economic recovery amid the coronavirus pandemic.  

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Biden zeroed in on the data point showing that the unemployment rate fell below 5 percent for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, characterizing it as a sign of “significant improvement” in the time since he took office.

He said that, on average, the U.S. economy has added 600,000 jobs on a monthly basis under his watch.

“The monthly total has bounced around, but if you look at the trend, it’s solid,” Biden said.

The U.S added just 194,000 jobs in September, falling well short of economists’ predictions of a 500,000-job gain. While the unemployment rate dropped from 5.2 percent in August to 4.8 percent last month, the steep decline is largely due to millions of jobless workers remaining on the sidelines.

The surge of COVID-19 cases driven by the more contagious delta variant severely slowed the recovery, causing employment growth to decline for two consecutive months. Employment growth fell from roughly 1.1 million jobs in July to 366,000 in August and less than 200,000 last month. 

The White House has sought to push back on the notion that the figures represented a setback in the recovery, focusing instead on the monthly average gain of 561,000 jobs this year.

“The unemployment rate is now down to 4.8% — in just eight months. We’ve created 2x more jobs under @POTUS in his first nine months than any administration in history,” chief of staff Ron KlainRon KlainBiden presses companies to get ahead of vaccine mandate Activists take fake bones to Klain’s home to highlight vaccine demands ‘Only the Rich Can Play’ documents how Republican program to help the poor didn’t MORE tweeted Friday morning, ahead of Biden’s speech. 

Biden argued in his remarks that his administration is making progress on the coronavirus and implementing his broader economic agenda despite the “noise” in Washington as Democrats wrangle over the details of a reconciliation package containing many of his priorities. 

“Right now, things in Washington are, as you all know, awfully noisy. Turn on the news and every conversation is a confrontation. Every disagreement is a crisis. But when you take a step back and look at what’s happening, we’re actually making real progress. Maybe it doesn’t seem fast enough,” Biden said. “I’d like to see it faster, and we’re going to make it faster.” 

“We’re making consistent, steady progress, though,” he added. 

Biden also tried to put the latest data in context, noting that the Labor Department statistics were taken from the middle of September at a…