By Karen Stokes
Gene Sperling, American Rescue Plan coordinator and senior advisor to the president (photo/Ballotopia)
This week, President Biden announced that GDP had grown nearly 3% over Q2 of 2024, the culmination of a robust economic agenda that has employed 2.3 million more Black Americans, raised wages, and reduced inflation since the first day of the Biden-Harris Administration.
The nation’s economic growth at a 2.8% annual rate, far exceeds economists’ expectations of a weaker 1.9% annual pace of growth.
Consumers and businesses helped drive growth despite the pressure of continually high interest rates.
“What was encouraging is that you really saw typical consumers are really doing well enough to keep spending and businesses are still having strong business investments. We see that global inflation is still too high but it continues to go down. If there was one word to describe this recovery is resilience,” said Gene Sperling, American Rescue Plan Coordinator and Senior Advisor to the President.
Sperling explained that the president had a strategy, a strong investment in people, and small businesses. What we’re seeing is that it’s not only helped to an equitable recovery but it’s helped to a more resilient recovery.
“The year 2023 was the lowest year for Black unemployment in the history of our country. When Biden came into office there were over a million less Black people working due to the pandemic. Now that one million has been covered and there’s an additional one million who are working,” Sperling said. “More Black households have small businesses. Because we have such a powerful recovery plan, we empowered people.”
Fed officials have made clear that with inflation slowing toward their 2% target level, they’re prepared to start cutting rates soon, something they’re widely expected to do in September.