This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

After it was announced on Friday that US unemployment had fallen below 5% for the first time in eight years, Barack Obama made a surprise visit to the White House briefing room.

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Praising how far the economy had come on his watch, since the recession of 2008, Obama attacked Republican candidates to succeed him he said were running “doom-and-despair” campaigns.

“Unemployment, deficit, gas prices are all down. Jobs, wages and rate of the insured are all up,” Obama said, not mentioning that the figure for jobs added in January, 151,000, also deemed disappointing when announced that morning.

“As I said in my State of the Union address, the United States of America right now has the strongest, most durable economy in the world.”



He continued: “I know that’s still inconvenient for Republican stump speeches as their doom-and-despair tour plays in New Hampshire. I guess you cannot please everybody.”

According to Obama, the US has recovered “faster, stronger, better, more durably than just about any other advanced economy”, specifically because it did not adopt some policies advocated by Republicans. Republicans “don’t seem to have any plausible, coherent recipe other than [to] cut taxes” for the rich, he said.

Without naming names, Obama said some Republican candidates for president argued that Americans are “feeling insecure … because immigrants or poor people are taking more and more of your paycheck”.

“That’s not true,” the president said, vowing to spend the rest of his last year in office touting the “progress we have made”.

Obama’s message was one of recovery, progress and hope. In December, though, he said he could understand why people would support the likes of Donald Trump if they were frustrated with stagnant wages and were unable to find good jobs.

Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont who is fighting former secretary of state Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, also noted that economic hardship was one reason why Trump appealed to some voters.

“Many of Trump’s supporters are working-class people and they’re angry,” he said in December. “They’re angry because they’re working longer hours for lower wages.

“They’re angry because their jobs have left this country and gone to China or other low-wage countries. They’re angry because they can’t afford to send their kids to college so they can’t retire with dignity.”

One of the signs that voters still lack confidence in the US job market is the labor participation rate, which in 2015 reached its lowest point in 38 years.

“We are still at a point where labor participation rate is lower than it has been historically,” Obama said on Friday. In January, the rate was 62.7%. Obama noted that part of the problem is due to a shift in demographics, as an increasing number of Americans enter retirement.

Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) Labor Force Participation ticks up to 62.7%. Better, but still low by historical standards #jobs pic.twitter.com/oJsv8oGRZ2

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“Some of this is still hangover from what happened in 2007 and 2008 and this is part of the reason why we have to keep our foot to the accelerator in terms of doing the things that need to be done to keep the economy going and keep it strong,” Obama said.

The US secretary of labor, Tom Perez, described Friday’s report as “solid”.

“This is the best six months of wage growth since the start of the recovery,” he said, in a call with the Guardian.

The past year has seen wages grow by 2.5%. In January, 4.5 million Americans got a raise thanks to state and local laws that increased minimum wages, said Perez.

“I want to get to where we were at the end of the 90s, which was 4% unemployment,” Perez said, minutes before Obama took the stage. “I think we can get there, but we still have a lot of work to do.”

An infrastructure bill signed into law by Obama last year will keep the momentum going in the construction sector. Perez said that to really drive down unemployment, Congress should look to increase the federal minimum wage and pass an immigration bill.