and then i m heading off to do harry reid s funeral. so, this morning i want to talk about i think a historic day for our economic recovery. today s national unemployment rate fell below 4% to 3.9%. the sharpest one-year drop in unemployment in united states history. the first time the unemployment rate has been under 4% and the first year of a presidential term in 50 years. 3.9% unemployment rate. years faster than experts said we would be able to do it. and we have added 6.4 million new jobs since january of last year. one year. that s one of the most that s the most jobs in any calendar year by any president in
have added 6.4 million new jobs since january of last year. the president not just touting all those gains but also calling out republicans. now i hear republicans say today that my talking about this strong record shows that i don t understand that i don t understand a lot of people are still suffering they say, well, they are, or that i m not focused on inflation. malarkey. i they want to talk down the recovery because they voted against the legislation that made it happen. they voted against the tax cuts for middle class families. they voted against the funds we needed to reopen our schools, to keep police officers and firefighters on the job, to lower health care premiums. they voted against the fun that they are looking to buy covid booster shots and more antiviral
and it s getting america back to work, back on its feet. reporter: the u.s. economy adding only 199,000 jobs in december, even before omicron s big surge, making it the weakest jobs report of 2021. but biden is looking on the bright side, highlighting how unemployment fell to 3.9%, the best level since the pandemic began. the sharpest one-year drop in unemployment in the united states history. reporter: overall, the u.s. economy now has about 6.4 million more jobs than it did at the start of 2021, but it is still 3.6 million jobs short of prepandemic levels. we brought down the poverty rate and went from 20 million people on unemployment rolls a year ago to under 2 million people on unemployment rolls today. reporter: while acknowledging inflation is still a persistent problem, biden highlighted an impressive increase in wages. desk clerks, line cooks,
presidency, is this a sign there s still a long way to go into the recovery from the pandemic? i think it depends how you define recovery. certainly we have millions of jobs opening in this country and working to get people back, 6.4 million people going back to work in 2021 was a 25 year high, the largest job growth in one particular year in 25 years, unemployment rates 3.5%, that s a 3 point drop in one year, that s the highest drop since the 1940s. certainly, we all have work to do moving forward, working with industries at the department of labor, president tasked me with creating new opportunities for job training programs to get people trained and skilled and into new jobs. infrastructure law that just passed will help us with that as well, and then working with companies and working with employees around the country is another thing. i think that we re not doing this in a silo, we re working collectively together, i think continuing to get the coronavirus numbers down, the omi
vaccine. today most people in my state have had the ak covid-19 and many on their way to getting the booster. a year ago 6.4 million people didn t have jobs that have jobs today. it s not enough to say, oh, we made great headway. we have to push forward. when i head back to washington in a week, i ll be looking very hard at what we can do to get progress of the important things we need to get done, affordable health care, let s get to work on these things we can find 50 votes for in the senate and get them done. to that end, let s take a listen to what your colleague bernie sanders said democrats should do next when it comes to passing legislation. here it is. that is to take it to the republicans, to bring important pieces of legislation that impact the lives of working families on the floor of the senate. if the republicans want to vote to protect the wealthy and the