 President Joe Biden says that April's lower than expected job growth reveals that the U.S. economy is still struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and that his massive infrastructure and family support bills are needed now more than ever, hiring slow dramatically in April with non-farm payrolls increasing by a much less than expected 266,000 and the unemployment rate rose to 61 or 6.1% amid an escalating shortage of available workers. When we passed the American Rescue Plan, I want to remind everybody it was designed to help us over the course of a year, not 60 days, a year. We never thought that after the first 50 or 60 days everything would be fine. Today there's more evidence that our economy is moving in the right direction, but it's clear we have a long way to go. All told, our economy has added more than 1,500,000 new jobs since I took office. That's the most number of jobs created in the first three months of any presidency in our history. Some critics said that we didn't need the American Rescue Plan, that this economy would just heal itself. Today's report just underscores in my view how vital the actions we're taking are. Checks to people who are hurting, support for small businesses, for childcare and school reopening, support to help families put food on the table. Our efforts are starting to work, but the climb is steep and we still have a long way to go.