"We aren't likely to see the kind of blockbuster job reports month after month like we had over this past year," Biden told reporters at the White House.
US employers added 390,000 jobs in May while the unemployment rate remained steady at 3.6% for a third month in a row, the Labor Department said on Friday in data likely to embolden the central bank in carrying out more rate hikes to tame inflation running at 40-year highs.
Unemployment among Americans reached a record high of 14.8% in April 2020, with the loss of some 20 million jobs in the aftermath of the coronavirus breakout that year. Jobs recovery has, however, been stellar over the past year, with the jobless rate being at 4% or below since January — a level defined by the Federal Reserve as "full employment".
The monthly jobs report is being closely watched by the central bank to decide on the rate hikes that will be needed to contain inflation expanding faster than the economy.
US inflation has been persistently running at four-decade highs since late last year, with the closely-watched Consumer Price Index (CPI) growing at an annualized rate of 8.3% as of April.
After leaving rates at between zero and 0.25% for a period of two years due to the coronavirus outbreak, the central bank’s policy-making Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) raised them for the first time to 0.5% in March and subsequently to 1% in May. The FOMC’s target for inflation is a mere 2% a year and it has vowed to raise interest rates non-stop, if necessary, to achieve that.
After tumbling 3.5% in 2020 due to the complications caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the US economy expanded by 5.7% in 2021, growing at its fastest pace in 40 years. But since 2022 began, the economy has been on a weaker trajectory, experiencing a negative growth of 1.4% in the first quarter. If the economy does not return to positive territory by the second quarter, it will technically be in recession given that it takes just two straight negative quarters to account for a recession.
Biden, however, said that forsaking some jobs and economic growth for lower inflation was actually "a good thing."
"That's a sign of a healthy economy," he added.
Despite a slower start to the year, the US economy will likely grow 3.1% for all of 2022, the Congressional Budget Office forecast last week.