Treasury Secretary Blames Pandemic for 'Special Impacts on the Economy'
Biden administration has been very successful in taming unemployment, Yellen says
Although the nation has experienced “rapid recovery” under President Biden's leadership, the pandemic has left “special impacts” which he and the nation continue to grapple, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
“So, we had rapid recovery from the pandemic. When President Biden was elected, unemployment was quite high. It was close to 7 percent,” Yellen said in an appearance Wednesday night on late-night funnyman Stephen Colbert's program. “And we put policies in place that generated a very rapid recovery. Unemployment quickly fell back into the threes.”
Unemployment nationally is at 3.7 percent, Yellen told Colbert.
Inflation, however, has risen sharply, raising the prices consumers pay for food, fuel and other goods, Colbert noted.
“So normally you wouldn’t expect, just because you had a rapid recovery, for inflation to rise very much, if at all. But it turned out the pandemic had very special impacts on the economy,” she added. “Remember, everybody stopped spending on services. They were in their homes for a year or more. They wanted to buy grills and office furniture. They were working from home. They suddenly started splurging on goods, buying technology.”
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