White House Claims U.S. Economy Is Currently Strongest ‘In History’

During Thursday’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that the United States is now at a stronger point economically than it has been “in history.”

“When we look at where we are economically — and we are stronger economically than we have been in history,” Jean-Pierre said. “When you look at the unemployment numbers at 3.6%, when you look at the jobs numbers, more than 8.7 million of new jobs created, that is important.”

WOW: Karine Jean-Pierre actually just said, "We are stronger economically than we have been in history." pic.twitter.com/xbAcYpYfk2

— John Cooper (@thejcoop) July 7, 2022

Jean-Pierre made a similar claim a few weeks ago when she did her best trying to explain that the economic situation of the United States puts it in a “good position” to address inflation.

“What I’m trying to say to you is that the economy is in a better place than it has been historically. And so we feel here at this administration, and other experts as well, is that we feel that we are in a good position to take on inflation,” Jean-Pierre said.

Jean-Pierre’s claims come as the United States appears to have entered a recession while also suffering from record high inflation.

According to the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow measure, which is the Federal Reserve’s key gauge for measuring economic activity, the United States economy will shrink by 2.1% in the second quarter. This 2.1% contraction in the second quarter paired with the first quarter’s decline of 1.6% would mean that the United States has entered a recession.

“GDPNow has a strong track record, and the closer we get to July 28th’s release [of the initial Q2 GDP estimate] the more accurate it becomes,” wrote Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research.

The tracker fell dramatically from last week’s estimate of 0.3% after data “showing further weakness in consumer spending and inflation-adjusted domestic investment prompted the cut that put the April-through-June period into negative territory,” CNBC reported.