a massive, almost a million jobs added, whereas the survey of businesses showed only 200,000 and well below expected. so everybody is kind of scratching their head and thinking that there s going to be some major revisions in the months to come. so it s not just me, since i m not an economist and barely play one on tv. kristen, i m not the only person confused here, maybe the president is confused as well, but you were in the room with him. and despite clearly having a little bit of a cold today, his reactions? well, i think it s interesting to hear austan talking about the tale of two numbers, because the president is certainly focused on the one number that i think that he felt underscored his broader point, which is that the economy is in a state of recovery. that 4.2%. the fact that that is the lowest unemployment rate since the pandemic began. and he talked about the fact that there are still hurdles and headwinds. of course, the supply chain
the pandemic. as president biden pointed out earlier today, there is, of course, the growing threat of omicron. our economy is markedly stronger than it was a year ago. and today, the incredible news that our unemployment rate has fallen to 4.2%. at this point in the year, we re looking at the sharpest one-year decline in unemployment ever. joining us now is nbc news senior capitol hill correspondent, garrett haake, kristen welker with, and austan goolsbee, former top economic adviser to president obama. austan, first to you. what do you make of this number? could this be an outlier or be revised upward as the last two months, or what do you think is going on here in the economy? look, it s kind of a tale of two numbers. because when the jobs numbers come out, there is an unemployment number which comes from a survey of people and there s a jobs total, which