President Joe Biden received further negative news Wednesday about the economic environment in the U.S. under his leadership as newly released numbers show that the economy is overheating and inflation is growing at an even higher rate than anticipated.
“Inflation accelerated at its fastest pace in more than 12 years for April as the U.S. economic recovery kicked into gear and energy prices jumped higher,” CNBC reported. “The Consumer Price Index, which measures a basket of goods as well as energy and housing costs, rose 4.2% from a year ago, compared to the Dow Jones estimate for a 3.6% increase. The monthly gain was 0.8%, against the expected 0.2%.”
The report sent the stock market tumbling shortly after it was released by the Department of Labor.
“Rising commodity markets, supply-chain blockages and hiring difficulties have prompted some investors to expect a prolonged upswing in consumer prices,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “That could lead the Federal Reserve to raise its target for short-term interest rates sooner than it has signaled, potentially weighing on stocks and other assets that have benefited from over a year of near-zero borrowing costs.”
The news comes less than a week after the Biden administration suffered a major setback when April’s jobs report showed that only 266,000 jobs were added to the economy, 700,000 less than had been projected.
The black unemployment rate increased, 18,000 manufacturing jobs were lost, no construction jobs were added, unemployment for Americans without any college education increased, and women had a net loss in jobs. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said that nearly 10 million Americans, 9.8 million to be exact, remained unemployed in Biden’s economy.
News of last week’s abysmal job numbers was made even worse when the job numbers from March, which originally saw an estimated gain of 916,000 new jobs, had been revised down to 770,000 jobs, “meaning that the net number of people employed over the past month, relative to what was known just hours ago, was a mere 120,000,” Bloomberg News reported.
Biden struggled to respond to the jobs report, claiming that it proved that the economy was “moving in the right direction” and that it showed “we’re on the right track.”
Biden faced further negative news this week about conditions in the U.S. under his leadership when U.S. Customs and Border Protection released new numbers that showed that Biden’s border crisis worsened during the month of April.
CBP data published Tuesday showed that immigration arrests and detentions on the U.S.-Mexico shot up to in April at 178,622, a 3% increase from March, the highest in the history of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The media tried to spin the news as a bit of a win for the Biden administration because the surge in arrests of illegal aliens was driven in large part by single adults while the number of unaccompanied minors apprehended fell.
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