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      US adds 559,000 jobs in May as fears of hiring slowdown fade

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      The US added 559,000 jobs in May as the coronavirus pandemic receded, shaking off fears of a substantial slowdown in hiring after April’s disappointing monthly report.The Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Friday that the unemployment rate had fallen to 5.8% from 6.1% in April, still significantly higher than the 3.8% unemployment rate recorded in February 2020 before Covid 19 hit the US but less than half its 14.8% peak in April last year.The news comes one month after the labor department shocked economists by announcing the US had added just 266,000 new jobs in April – far below the 1m gain that had been expected. May’s gains were less than economists had predicted and with the level of employment still 7.6m jobs below its pre-pandemic peak, the Capital Economics group calculates it would take more than 12 months at the current pace to fully eradicate the shortfall.April’s report led to sparring between the Biden administration and Republicans who claimed higher levels of unemployment benefits were keeping people from returning to work and this month’s lukewarm report is unlikely to end that row.But there are signs of a strong rebound across the US economy. Worker filings for unemployment benefits have dropped by 35% since late April and fell to a pandemic low of 385,000 last week, the labor department said on Thursday.Private sector employment increased by 978,000 jobs in May, according to ADP, the US’s largest payroll supplier. The figure was the strongest gain since the early days of the recovery. “Companies of all sizes experienced an uptick in job growth, reflecting the improving nature of the pandemic and economy,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP.More than half of adult Americans are now fully vaccinated and business is booming in many sectors as state and local governments ease restrictions. But employers across the country are reporting worker shortages as the recovery strengthens. The US Chamber of Commerce said this week that labor shortages now represent “the most critical and widespread challenge” to US businesses. Nearly half of small-business owners had unfilled job openings in May, according to a survey from the National Federation of Independent Business.Alongside evidence of strong growth, some economists are warning about the return of inflation. Prices on a broad range of goods from lumber to chicken have soared as demand has outstripped supply. In April a key inflation indicator – the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index – rose to 3.1% compared to last year, its highest level in 13 years. More

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      Biden proposes $6tn budget to boost infrastructure, education and climate

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      Joe Biden set out a $6tn budget proposal on Friday that, if passed, would fund a sweeping overhaul of US infrastructure and pour money into education and climate action, while driving government spending to its highest sustained levels since the second world war.The president’s first budget is largely a political document, and faces months of difficult negotiations in Congress where Republicans are already balking at the scale of his spending plans. But it clearly sets out Biden’s ambition to remake the US after the coronavirus pandemic.“Now is the time to build on the foundation that we’ve laid, to make bold investments in our families, in our communities, in our nation,” Biden told a crowd in Cleveland on Thursday. “We know from history that these kinds of investments raise both the floor and the ceiling of an economy for everybody.”Republicans immediately attacked the plan. Senator Mitch McConnell said it would “drown American families in debt, deficits, and inflation.”The White House has set out a two-part plan to overhaul the US economy by upgrading its infrastructure and expanding its social safety net. The costs of the programmes would lead to the US running annual deficits of over $1.3tn over the next decade and debt rising to 117% of the value of economic output by 2031.Alongside rebuilding bridges, roads, airports and other infrastructure, Biden has proposed a $13bn federal investment to roll out broadband internet access. Democrats are also pushing to expand and reform the US’s social programmes with government money for paid family leave and universal pre-school.In part the plan would be funded by tax increases on corporations and the very wealthy. Biden has already proposed increasing US corporation taxes to 28% from 21%, a plan opposed by all Republicans and some Democrats.Biden has said he is willing to negotiate with his political opponents on the shape and size of his proposals, but he will struggle to find Republican support for his agenda. No Republicans voted for his $1.9tn Covid stimulus bill and he has already been forced to scale back his infrastructure bill to $1.7tn from the originally proposed $2.2tn effort.The economy has improved markedly since Biden took office and the pandemic began to wane in the US. More than half of the country is now fully vaccinated and hiring has picked up as the economy has reopened.But the Biden administration believes the pandemic highlighted many structural issues with the US economy that need to be addressed by federal spending.Unemployment rates for Black and Latino Americans remain disproportionately high and women were hit particularly hard by the pandemic recession – in many cases because a lack of affordable childcare prevented them from working.A huge increase in government spending has fueled concerns about rising inflation. Prices on goods including lumber, cars and chicken have soared in recent months, and the commerce department said on Friday that the personal consumption expenditures index, a key measure of inflation, increased by 3.1% in April from a year ago, its highest level since 1992.On Thursday the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said the budget would push US debt above the size of the US economy, but said the proposed plan was responsible and would not contribute to inflationary pressures.“I believe it is a fiscally responsible program,” Yellen told a House appropriations subcommittee. More

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      Workers matter and government works: eight lessons from the Covid pandemic

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      Maybe it’s wishful thinking to declare the pandemic over in the US, and presumptuous to conclude what lessons we’ve learned. So consider this a first draft.1. Workers are always essentialWe couldn’t have survived without millions of warehouse, delivery, grocery and hospital workers literally risking their lives. Yet most of these workers are paid squat. Amazon touts its $15 minimum wage but it totals only about $30,000 a year. Most essential workers don’t have health insurance or paid leave. Many of their employers (including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, to take but two examples) didn’t give them the personal protective equipment they needed.Lesson: Essential workers deserve far better.2. Healthcare is a basic rightYou know how you got your vaccine without paying a dime? That’s how all healthcare could be. Yet too many Americans who contracted Covid-19 got walloped with humongous hospital bills. By mid-2020, about 3.3 million people had lost employer-sponsored coverage and the number of uninsured had increased by 1.9 million. Research by the Urban Institute found that people with chronic disease, Black Americans and low-income children were most likely to have delayed or foregone care during the pandemic.Lesson: America must insure everyone.3. Conspiracy theories can be deadlyLast June, about one in four Americans believed the pandemic was “definitely” or “probably” created intentionally, according to the Pew Research Center. Other conspiracy theories have caused some people to avoid wearing masks or getting vaccinated, resulting in unnecessary illness or death.Lesson: An informed public is essential. Some of the responsibility falls on all of us. Some of it on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms that allowed misinformation to flourish.4. The stock market isn’t the economyThe stock market rose throughout the pandemic, lifting the wealth of the richest 1% who own half of all stock owned by Americans. Meanwhile, from March 2020 to February 2021 80 million in the US lost their jobs. Between June and November 2020, nearly 8 million fell into poverty. Black and Latino adults were more than twice as likely as white adults to report not having enough to eat: 16% each for Black and Latino adults, compared to 6% of white adults.Lesson: Stop using the stock market as a measure of economic wellbeing. Look instead at the percentage of Americans who are working, and their median pay.5. Wages are too low to get by onMost Americans live paycheck to paycheck. So once the pandemic hit, many didn’t have any savings to fall back on. Conservative lawmakers complain that the extra $300 a week unemployment benefit Congress enacted in March discourages people from working. What’s really discouraging them is lack of childcare and lousy wages.Lesson: Raise the minimum wage, strengthen labor unions and push companies to share profits with their workers.6. Remote work is now baked into the economyThe percentage of workers punching in from home hit a high of 70% in April 2020. A majority still work remotely. Some 40% want to continue working from home.Two lessons: Companies will have to adjust. And much commercial real estate will remain vacant. Why not convert it into affordable housing?7. Billionaires aren’t the answerThe combined wealth of America’s 657 billionaires grew by $1.3tn – or 44.6% – during the pandemic. Jeff Bezos, with $183.9bn, became the richest man in the world. Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, added $11.8bn to his $94.3bn fortune. Sergey Brin, Google’s other co-founder, added $11.4bn. Yet billionaires’ taxes are lower than ever. Wealthy Americans today pay one-sixth the rate of taxes their counterparts paid in 1953.Lesson: To afford everything the nation needs, raise taxes at the top.8. Government can be the solutionRonald Reagan’s famous quip – “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem” – can now officially be retired. Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” succeeded in readying vaccines faster than most experts thought possible. Biden got them into more arms more quickly than any vaccination program in history.Furthermore, the $900bn in aid Congress passed in late December prevented millions from losing unemployment benefits and helped sustain the recovery when it was faltering. The $1.9tn Democrats pushed through in March will help the US achieve something it failed to achieve after the 2008-09 recession: a robust recovery.Lesson: The federal government did not just help beat the pandemic. It also did more to keep the nation afloat than in any previous recession. It must be prepared to do so again. More

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      Markets fall as US consumer prices see sharpest monthly climb since 2008

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      US consumer prices soared in April as post-lockdown demand and shortages drove up the cost of a wide range of goods, from used cars and home furnishings to airline tickets.The news triggered a further slide in markets unsettled this week by the threat of rising prices, which could force central banks to abandon zero0-interest rate policies that have helped stoke share prices. The Dow Jones index fell 1.3% in early trading and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 2.5%.The Consumer Price Index (CPI) climbed 4.2% during the month from a year earlier, the labor department said, the biggest 12-month increase since September 2008, the height of the financial crisis. The figure was significantly higher than economists had predicted.CPI measures the prices consumers pay for goods and services, including clothes, groceries, restaurant meals, recreational activities and vehicles. This month’s rise saw increases across the board and was driven by many factors.The Biden administration’s economic stimulus package has pumped money into the economy just as it reopens from coronavirus lockdown measures. Fresh demand for goods and services has also outpaced supply, which is still recovering from the lockdowns at the start of the pandemic, leading to shortages for a broad range of goods from lumber and steel to ketchup.Used car and truck prices in particular have surged as a global shortage of microchips has dampened production of new vehicles. The price of a used car rose 10% over the month and topped $25,000 for the first time, about $2,800 higher than in April last year, according to the research firm JD Power.The figures are inflated by a collapse in prices last year as the US economy shut down, but they still caught economists by surprise. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected a 3.6% increase in CPI over the year and a 0.2% increase from March. The monthly increase was 0.8%. The news led US stock markets to fall again after a sharp selloff on Tuesday.The Federal Reserve has predicted a spike in inflation in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic but has said it believes it will be short-lived. Last month Fed chair Jerome Powell said the central bank was watching price increases but was not yet concerned about inflation, arguing “one-time increases in prices are likely to only have transitory effects on inflation”.Others are more concerned. Former treasury secretary Larry Summers has warned the US could face a period of high inflation unseen since the 1970s. Talking to Bloomberg TV he said it was “plain wrong” to suggest that inflation cannot surge unexpectedly.“It may be that a way will be found to bring it under control,” he said. “But as I look at $3tn of stimulus, $2tn of savings overhang, a major acceleration coming from Covid in the rear-view mirror, rates expected by the Federal Reserve to be at zero for three years even in a booming economy, record growth this year, major expansion of the Fed balance sheet, and much new fiscal stimulus to come – I’m worried.”Investors too are now worried that the rise in prices will be higher and more sustained than the central bank believes, and that in order to contain the price surge the Fed may have to increase interest rates sooner than expected from the near zero level it set in March last year as the pandemic struck.“April inflation data far exceeded market expectations,” the Economist Intelligence Unit wrote in a note to investors. “We had expected to see a big jump in year-on-year inflation in April, given the comparison to the depth of the recession in April 2020. However, the month-on-month increase in prices, coming on top of a 0.6% monthly increase in March, was surprisingly strong.”“We do not expect this increase to be replicated again in May, but this will still be enough to lift inflation expectations for the full-year 2021,” the Economist Intelligence Unit wrote. More

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      Yellen seeks to tamp down concern over US government spending under Biden

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      The US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, on Sunday sought to tamp down concerns that Joe Biden’s plans on infrastructure, jobs and families will cause inflation, saying spending will be phased in over a decade.“It’s spread out quite evenly over eight to 10 years,” the former chair of the Federal Reserve told NBC’s Meet the Press.She said the Fed would monitor inflation carefully.“I don’t believe that inflation will be an issue but if it becomes an issue, we have tools to address it,” Yellen said. “These are historic investments that we need to make our economy productive and fair.”Addressing Congress on Wednesday, Biden said his “American Jobs Plan is a blue collar blueprint to build America. That’s what it is.”He has said his plans will be paid for by a series of tax increases on the wealthiest Americans, less than 1% of the population, and by raising corporate taxes. Some Democrats have expressed concerns such increases will slow economic growth.“We’re proposing changes to the corporate tax system that would close loopholes,” Yellen said.“This comes also in the context of global negotiations to try to stop the decades-long race to the bottom among countries in competing for business by lowering their corporate tax rates. And we feel that will be successful.The president has pledged that no family earning under $400,000 will pay a penny more in taxes“The president has pledged that no family earning under $400,000 will pay a penny more in taxes. And we’ve been assiduous in sticking to that pledge.”Republicans oppose corporate tax increases. The Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy told Fox News Sunday: “Academics would say if you raise taxes on corporations, you have lower wages, you have less investment, and you hurt shareholders. Think pension funds.“Now, if it’s OK to have lower wages for working people, it’s a blue collar thing. If it’s OK to have less investment, it’s a blue collar thing. But if you want higher wages, if you want more investment, if you want more efficient deployment of capital, than it’s anti-blue collar.”Speaking to CBS’s Face the Nation, the White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, countered Cassidy’s claims.Corporations, he said, “got that giant tax cut in 2017 [under Donald Trump]. What we’re talking about is just rolling some of that tax cut back. So we’re talking about putting the rate back up to 28%. It was 35% before that tax cut came. So corporates would still have a lower tax rate than the rate they had prior to 2017.“We think that 2017 tax cut didn’t meet its promise. You didn’t see massive investments in [research and development], you didn’t see wages go up. What you saw was CEO pay go up … So we think we can raise those taxes on corporations and fund the things that make the economy grow. Bridges, roads, airports, rail.”Republicans also oppose the scope of Biden’s infrastructure proposals, contending priorities such as expanding green energy, electric cars and elder and child care should not be pursued.“The administration needs to kind of be honest with the American people,” Cassidy said. “If you really want roads and bridges, come where Republicans already are. If you want to … do a lot of other stuff, well that’s a different story. Roads and bridges, we’re a lot closer than you might think.”Yellen would not speculate on whether Biden would accept a bill from Congress that does not include a way to pay for the spending increases he wants.“He has made clear that he believes that permanent increase in spending should be paid for and I agree,” she said. More

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      The first 100 days of Biden were also the first 100 without Trump – that’s telling | Robert Reich

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      By almost any measure, Joe Biden’s first 100 days have been hugely successful. Getting millions of Americans inoculated against Covid-19 and beginning to revive the economy are central to that success.Two-thirds of Americans support Biden’s $1.9tn stimulus plan, already enacted. His infrastructure and family plans, which he outlined on Wednesday night at a joint session of Congress, also have broad backing. The $6tn price tag for all this would make it the largest expansion of the federal government since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. But for most Americans, it doesn’t feel radical.Rather than bet it all on a single large-scale program such as universal healthcare – which Bill Clinton failed to accomplish and which Barack Obama turned into a target of Republican fearmongering – Biden has picked an array of popular initiatives, such as preschool, public community college, paid family and medical leave, home care and infrastructure repairs, which are harder to vilify.Economists talk about pent-up demand for private consumer goods, caused by the pandemic. Biden is responding to a pent-up demand for public goods. The demand has been there for years but the pandemic has starkly revealed it. Compared with workers in other developed nations, Americans enjoy few if any social benefits and safety nets. Biden is saying, in effect, it’s time we caught up.Even on the fraught issue of race, the contrast with Trump has strengthened Biden’s handBesides, it’s hard for Republicans to paint Biden as a radical. He doesn’t feel scary. He’s old, grandfatherly. He speaks haltingly. He’s humble. When he talks about the needs of average working people, it’s clear he knows them.Biden has also been helped by the contrast to his immediate predecessor – the most divisive and authoritarian personality to occupy the Oval Office in modern memory. Had Biden been elected directly after Obama, regardless of the pandemic and economic crisis, it’s unlikely he and his ambitious plans would seem so benign.In his address to Congress, Biden credited others for the achievements of his first 100 days. They had been accomplished “because of you”, he said, even giving a nod to Republicans. His predecessor was incapable of crediting anyone else for anything.Meanwhile, the Republican party, still captive to its Trumpian base, has no message or policies to counter Biden’s proposals. Donald Trump left it with little more than a list of grievances irrelevant to the practical needs of most Americans: that Trump would have been re-elected but for fraudulent votes and a “deep state” conspiracy, that Democrats are “socialists” and that the “left” is intent on taking away American freedoms.Biden has a razor-thin majority in Congress and must keep every Democratic senator in line if he is to get his plans enacted. But the vacuum on the right has allowed him to dominate the public conversation about his initiatives, which makes passage more likely.Trump is aiding Biden in other ways. Trump’s yawning budget deficits help normalize Biden’s. When Trump sent $1,200 stimulus checks to most Americans last year regardless of whether they had a job, he cleared the way for Biden to deliver generous jobless benefits.Trump’s giant $1.9tn tax cut for big corporations and the wealthy, none of which “trickled down”, make Biden’s proposals to increase taxes on corporations and the wealthy to pay for infrastructure and education seem even more reasonable.Trump’s fierce economic nationalism has made Biden’s “buy American” initiative appear innocent by comparison. Trump’s angry populism has allowed Biden to criticize Wall Street and support unions without causing a ripple.At the same time, Trumpian lawmakers’ refusal to concede the election and their efforts to suppress votes have alienated much of corporate America, pushing executives toward Biden by default.Even on the fraught issue of race, the contrast with Trump has strengthened Biden’s hand. Most Americans were so repulsed by Trump’s overt racism and overtures to white supremacists, especially after the police murder of George Floyd, that Biden’s initiatives to end police brutality and “root out systemic racism”, as he said on Wednesday night, seem appropriate correctives.The first 100 days of the Biden presidency were also the first 100 days of America without Trump, and the two cannot be separated.With any luck, Biden’s plans might prove to be the antidote to Trumpism – creating enough decent-paying working-class jobs, along with benefits such as childcare and free community college, as to forestall some of the rightwing dyspepsia that Trump whipped into a fury. More

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      The Guardian view on Biden’s 100 days: going big, but not big enough | Editorial

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      Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office signalled that the future does not have to be a rerun of the past. The US president’s speech to Congress this week made it clear that Trumpism was a warning from history, a reminder that no republic is guaranteed to last. The US remains in danger – its decline accelerated by an iniquitous economic model, and by leaders unable or unwilling to remedy it. It is a relief to find in the White House a president who wants to bridge divisions rather than widen them. Mr Biden should be praised for saying he will stop the rot and recognising the challenge to democracy posed by autocracy. But his response risks being undone by an obsession with containing non-existent fiscal risks.The Biden White House proposes spending $4trn, with about half the money used to rewrite the social contract. The rest will create jobs, with infrastructure investments to repurpose the post-Covid economy for a zero-carbon world. The problem is not that money is being spent to fix a broken society. Neither is it wrong to ask the rich to pay their fair share of tax. The problem is that Mr Biden says spending must be balanced by tax rises or savings from other government programmes.This is a self-imposed and self-defeating constraint. It seems bad economics to pay for every dollar invested in early childhood education when each greenback yields $7.30 in benefits. A number of centrist Democrats have already signalled their opposition to the proposed tax hikes. If Mr Biden wanted cash, he could back the Internal Revenue Service to go after the $1tn in unpaid taxes every year. With a razor-thin Democratic majority in the US Senate, there is a risk that privileging arbitrary fiscal limits will lead to laws not being enacted or spending being pared back to match reduced revenues.Mr Biden’s intention to bust a failed economic paradigm is a good one. It would be a scandal if it were sacrificed on the altar of budget neutrality. The threat to liberal democracy is not from fiscal incontinence but political polarisation. America has spent decades running up large deficits with no adverse macroeconomic consequences. In Washington, a debt crisis always seems to be coming. Yet it never arrives. The nation is increasingly endangered by growing levels of inequality, financial instability and ecological calamity. The Gilded Age looks egalitarian compared with the emerging concentration of riches. Either democracy must be renewed by freeing the state from ideological restrictions or wealth is likely to cement a less democratic regime.It makes little sense for Mr Biden to elevate balanced budgets when the country faces existential choices, a point recently made by two Obama-era White House economic advisers. No one doubts the sincerity of the Biden team. The question is whether they have subordinated the scale of the crises to congressional politicking. Columbia University’s Adam Tooze pointed out that the president’s climate spending amounts to about 0.5% of US GDP, an amount 10 times smaller than that required to decarbonise the economy. The economist Stephanie Kelton wrote that to accommodate such large expenditures, the Biden administration “would have to develop a robust plan with a focus on containing inflationary pressures”. These are the arguments that Mr Biden should be having with his party, not whether the wealthiest ought to pay for anti-poverty programmes.It is better to let the government’s fiscal balance settle to whatever level is required to deal with the multiple emergencies the US faces, given the spending and portfolio decisions of the private sector. It is not the case that the government’s ability to spend is constrained by budgetary accounting or temporary while interest rates remain low. The US Federal Reserve’s bond-purchasing programmes can control yields. Mr Biden’s economic team understands that a strong economy benefits the bottom half of America most. However, his spending plans threaten to centre the debate on reducing the deficit rather than rescuing the country. More

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      In his first 100 days, how has Biden handled the four crises he outlined?

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      In his inaugural address on 20 January, Joe Biden declared: “We will be judged, you and I, for how we resolve the cascading crises of our era.”The new US president outlined four crises facing America: the coronavirus pandemic, climate, economy and racial justice. Here is an assessment of his progress on each in his first 100 days:Coronavirus pandemicIn the first and more pressing crisis, Biden has been largely successful in changing the trajectory of the pandemic. Vaccine distribution has accelerated and the White House has been active in fighting hesitancy.The administration has also made a point of celebrating its milestones for vaccinating the public – in late April the Biden team passed the 200m shot milestone.There have been some bumps. The White House had to rethink its mass-vaccination site program while Johnson & Johnson had to temporarily halt distribution of its vaccine after a tiny fraction of recipients suffered blood clots. At moments the Biden team has had to fine tune and clarify statements on proper health protocols for staving off the pandemic.Dr Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president, has also gotten into proxy sparring matches with Republican elected officials over the pandemic. But if Biden’s presidency is to be judged on the pandemic, the figures speak for themselves.Jeffrey Zients, White House coronavirus response coordinator, said at a press briefing last week: “This crucial milestone of 200m shots in less than 100 days enabled more than 52% of adults across the country to have at least one shot. That’s more than 135 million Americans who are on their way to being protected from this virus.“Importantly, seniors accounted for 80% of Covid deaths. But now, we’ve seen an 80% reduction in deaths and a 70% reduction in hospitalization among seniors, proving just how effective vaccination is in preventing death and severe disease. This significant progress in a short period of time is a direct result of our deliberate, whole-of-government, wartime effort.”But even as the Biden administration oversees the end of the pandemic, some states are still struggling with coronavirus cases. There is also the outstanding question of how the Biden administration will do in helping the rest of the world battle the pandemic. On Monday the United States announced it would start sharing its stores of AstraZeneca vaccines with other countries.Climate crisisEarly on in his presidency, Biden appointed former secretary of state John Kerry to be climate czar and elevated that to a cabinet-level position. He issued a number of executive orders reversing the Trump administration’s moves weakening car emissions and energy efficiency standards.In February, Biden restored the pricing standard for carbon to the level it was at during the Obama administration. At the time though that fell short of boosting the cost to the level some climate scientists were recommending. Later the administration increased the cost again to keep up with inflation.Last week Biden convened a summit with 40 world leaders to discuss the climate crisis. He said: “The steps our countries take between now and Glasgow [host of a UN climate change conference] will set the world up for success to protect livelihoods around the world and keep global warming at a maximum of 1.5C.“We must get on the path now in order to do that. If we do, we’ll breathe easier, literally and figuratively; we’ll create good jobs here at home for millions of Americans; and lay a strong foundation for growth for the future. And that can be your goal as well.“This is a moral imperative, an economic imperative, a moment of peril but also a moment of extraordinary possibilities. Time is short, but I believe we can do this. And I believe that we will do this.”Nevertheless, the Biden administration has had to grapple with trying to accomplish its climate change goals with a narrowly divided Senate. The threat of filibusters in the Senate makes it very difficult for the administration to see its policy proposals move through federal legislation.Economic recoveryCoronavirus vaccinations are up, unemployment is down and businesses are reopening. Whether he is talking about infrastructure or the climate crisis, Biden has been pushing a message hard for anyone on the left or right to disagree with: jobs, jobs, jobs.The economy added 379,000 jobs in February and 916,000 jobs in March, exceeding expectations. The unemployment rate now stands at 6%. Weekly unemployment claims have fallen to their lowest level since the pandemic began. Growth increased to 6.4% in the first quarter of 2021, up from 4.3% in the final quarter of last year.And the stock market has seen better returns in Biden’s first hundred days than under any president in the past 75 years, despite former president Donald Trump’s prophecy of a Biden crash.Promising to “build back better”, Biden moved fast to sign a $1.9tn rescue plan on 11 March. It was the biggest federal recovery effort in a generation and more than double the size of Barack Obama’s stimulus package that followed the 2008 financial crisis.The legislation, which gained no Republican votes in Congress, sent more than 150m stimulus checks to US citizens, extended unemployment benefits, expanded food assistance and boosted health insurance subsidies. Its historic expansion of the Child Tax Credit aims to cut child poverty in half.The pandemic has exacerbated inequality. The rescue plan did not include a federal $15-an-hour minimum wage but is expected to boost the incomes of the lowest 20% by 20%. After four decades of Ronald Reagan’s low tax, trickle-down economics, it marked a restoration of faith in big government.Then came a $2tn infrastructure bill, which is likely to take longer and face more significant amendments in Congress. Biden, again touting job creation, is proposing to pay for it by increasing the corporate tax rate to 28% – lower than the 35% it stood at before Trump but still a stumbling block with Republicans.In the meantime, experts predict that the US economy could grow as fast as 7% this year – a potentially strong tail wind for Democrats going into the 2022 midterm elections.Racial justice“The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer,” Biden said in his inaugural address, and he appointed a historically diverse administration that includes, in the interior secretary, Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve in cabinet.The administration vowed to embed racial equity in its policies as never before. The $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill, for example, $5bn for Black farmers, and was described as the most significant legislation for this group since Civil Rights Act more than half a century ago.Biden’s first 100 days also coincided with the trial of ex-police officer Derek Chauvin, found guilty of murdering George Floyd in Minneapolis. The White House is pushing for Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which aims to improve police training, curb use of excessive force and end techniques such as chokeholds.It shouldn’t take a whole year to get this done“George Floyd was murdered almost a year ago,” Biden said after the Chauvin verdict. “It shouldn’t take a whole year to get this done.”The contrast from last year, when Donald Trump sided with police against Black Lives Matters supporters, was startling. In a sign of Biden’s resolve to exert federal oversight over police, the justice department launched an investigation into the Minneapolis police department.But Biden has gone back on a campaign promise to create a national police oversight commission in his first hundred days, reportedly after consulting civil rights organisations and police unions and concluding it might be used by Congress as an excuse to procrastinate.Some observers suggests that Biden, 78, is not undergoing a personal transformation so much as keeping in step with the Democratic party, which belatedly recognises racial justice as a defining issue.Rashad Robinson, president of the group Color of Change, told the New York Times: “Biden is actually being Biden by being inside of all of the ways in which the current landscape is sending him messages. That is good, but I don’t want to be classifying this as some sort of out-front radical leadership. That would really not represent everything that could be possible if we leaned in more.” More