Biden celebrates 'historic' jobs report despite falling short of forecasts

On Friday, President Joe Biden celebrated the publishing of December's jobs report, calling the moment "a historic day for our economic recovery," despite the number of jobs gained that month falling short of economists' forecasts.

"This morning, I want to talk about — I think it's a historic day for our economic recovery. Today's national unemployment rate fell below 4 percent, to 3.9 percent. The sharpest one-year drop in unemployment and United States history," said Biden.

"For the first time, the unemployment rate has been under 4 percent in the first year of a presidential term in 50 years," he continued

"3.9 percent unemployment rate, years faster than experts said we'd be able to do it. And we have added 6.4 million new jobs since January of last year, in one year. That's one of the most that's the most jobs in any calendar year by any president in history," Biden added.

Biden credited the successes he had seen to the passing of the American Rescue Plan in March of 2021, helping American get vaccinated, and getting "the economy off its back and moving again."

Despite Biden's high praises of the December jobs report, the number of jobs passed in December sharply missed that projected by economists.

"The Labor Department said in its monthly payroll report released Friday that payrolls in December rose by 199,000, sharply missing the 400,000 jobs forecast by Refinitiv economists," reported Fox Business.

Despite the jobs market gaining momentum since the Delta variant slowed hirings down over the summer, the figure marks a second consecutive month of worse than expected job growth. Fox Business noted that the last time the job growth was as slow as December was one year prior in December of 2020, where employers cut 306,000 positions.

The slow job growth came during a period where employers are still struggling to hire new employees due to factors like a lack of childcare, virus fears, and large stimulus savings.

"Today's jobs report is a disappointing bookend to a historic year in the job market," Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor told Fox Business. "The year ended on a sour note, with job gains slowing even more than in November. New and unpredictable waves of COVID-19 variants threaten to throw the recovery into reverse, showing that we're still at the mercy of the pandemic."

Others expressed their concerns with the lackluster jobs report for December, noting that the job growth reported was less than half of that expected by economists.