What Bidenomics Means for Workers and Families – UpNorthNews

President Biden today released his Bidenomics is Working fact sheet, working to burnish his reputation as the president who steered (and continues to steer) the US out of the economically jarring COVID-19 pandemic with major investments in everything from infrastructure to rural broadband and more.

I spoke with US Department of Labor Chief Economist Joelle Gamble to find out more about Bidens plan, including specific policies that are helping workers, and find out whats coming next to help those still struggling with low wages, high rents and more.

Chief Economist Joelle Gamble: Well, Bidenomics is definitely a departure from how things have been done in the past, and I think that thats intentional. As the President outlined in his speech today, trickle-down economics is a failed theory that failed the middle class.

Tax cuts for the rich and big corporations blew up the deficit and never trickled down. Good jobs were shipped overseas. Shrunken public investments actually undermined priorities that Americans care about, like infrastructure and education.

And so the Presidents plan is in stark contrast to that, because its focused on making smart investments in America, educating and empowering workers, and promoting competition. And those are all things I think will make the economy much stronger.

I think the labor market recovery is, in many ways, remarkable.

Over 13 million jobs have been added since the President took office, and nearly 800,000 of them were in the manufacturing sector.

Unemployment fell below 4% at the end of the Presidents first year in officewhich beat expectations, I should sayand it stayed there ever since. Weve seen record-low unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, people with disabilities, etc. So theres been a lot of progress made in the labor market.

I should also add that the prime age labor force participation rate is the highest its been in 15 years as well, and so theres a really strong labor market story here.

On top of that, theres other progress made in other regards. For instance, theres been a boom in small business applications over the last two years. And we are finally starting to see some progress on inflation.

The President definitely supports the PRO Act, andas he says many timesis determined to be the most pro-union president that this country has had.

And even though the progress that he would like to see on the PRO Act in Congress hasnt happened, that has not meant that he has stopped fighting for workers through administrative action, and in other ways that we can promote a workers right to organize.

Well, I think the Presidents plan to promote competition comes through a lot of different policy levers. There is, of course, the work that some of the regulatory agencies are doing to try to increase competition in the marketplace.

But another way to do that is actually to make it easier to start and grow a business. And so the Presidents agenda to increase access to capital for small businesses is actually very important, especially as we invest in a lot of different important manufacturing sectors, like clean energy.

The President still continues to support a $15 minimum wage.

I think this plan is very important for helping with that, in part because the Presidents plan is good for workersmeaning getting people good-paying jobs they can raise a family on is always an important part of any equation to making peoples lives better.

And then I will say that the investments were making are important to growing communities and attracting investment that could flow into other sectors. Were talking about construction in the non-residential space, but thats also important to increase housing supply as well.

Im not in the prediction business, but looking objectively at the data13 million jobs added, wages growing fastest for the lowest wage workers, record low unemployment ratethis is progress.

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What Bidenomics Means for Workers and Families - UpNorthNews