By Karen Stokes
Kirabo Jackson, Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors (Photo/American Economic Association)
Two key indicators of the strong post-pandemic recovery are the 19 million new business applications filed during President Biden and Vice President Harris’ term, and inflation is now at its lowest level since April 2021.
Since the pandemic, there have been improvements for sectors hit hard by the pandemic.
“One of the things we saw in the report is that overall, price levels, based on the CPI, have really returned for the most part, with the exception of housing to the kind of pricing that we saw before the pandemic,” said Kirabo Jackson, Member on the White House Council of Economic Advisors. “Overall the data is consistent with a normalization of the market. In most sectors where we saw some heat, that has all come down and we’re seeing prices that are consistent with steady growth.”
The American Rescue Plan played a substantial role in the recovery process through programs like the Child Tax Credit, which supported low-income Americans during the pandemic, and the Child Care Stabilization Funds, which helped stabilize the childcare market and enabled many centers to reopen. These measures not only stabilized the market but also facilitated the return to work for parents, particularly mothers with young children.
“One of the things that happens when we have an economic downturn is that it requires some support from the federal government to make sure that the bottom doesn’t fall out of the economy,” said Jackson. “This administration’s response was more aggressive than previous ones. Things we saw from the Great Recession, was that the plans that were put in place were not as robust as they could have been, and as a result, if you look at the data it took eight or nine years for the unemployment rate to recover. That was not the case of this administration, they made robust plans and we’re seeing strong job growth, and unemployment that is at historically low levels.”
Jackson added, “The Inflation Reduction Act, The bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and The Chips and Science Act, all are large pieces of legislation that we’re making strong investments in America, making strong investments in our infrastructure by laying down bridges and roads expanding access to broadband all of these are investments in terms of hiring more workers, but also it’s a down payment for productivity in the future.