Source: WHITE HOUSE, 1/3/22

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, folks.  How are you?  Welcome.  Welcome.  I wish you were here in person.  One of these days, we’re going to be able to do that again.  I want to thank you for joining us, and Happy New Year.

And before we begin, I want to say a word about where our economy stands today.

We’re entering 2022 in a position of a unique economic strength: Six million new jobs –- a record number for a new President — have been created since January last.  Unemployment is down to 4.2 percent, three years ahead of predictions.  New small-business applications are up over 30 percent compared with before the pandemic.  And the fastest growth in America in nearly 40 years. 

And America is the only leading economy in the world where the economy as a whole is stronger than it was before the pandemic, even after accounting for price increases.

Because — because we took action for the American Rescue Plan and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we’ve made important progress: We’ve begun to change the trajectory — to change the trajectory of our economy — the one that we inherited — to finally make it work for working people, to build up from the bottom up and the middle out, and to give working people the wages and benefits they deserve, and to encourage more innovation and faster growth.

So now, we’re in a strong position to address the challenge we face — and we have challenges — including the cost and prices that people have to pay.

We already laid out three — a three-part plan to address costs that families are facing. 

Number one, fix the supply chains.  We’re going to have another discussion on that in a couple of weeks with the Secretary of Agriculture.

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