The unemployment rate in the United States has dropped to 13.3%, and President Trump commented that the drop is “an affirmation of all the work we’ve been doing” to create jobs in a speech delivered in the Rose Garden.
In response to the announcement, Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R), the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, provided a statement on the drop, which is way below the expected 20%. Initially, forecasters expected 7.5 million job losses last month, but 2.5 million were added, which is the highest number of jobs created in a single month that’s ever been recorded. In addition, the last time that this level of job creation was experienced was in September 1983 when 1.1 million jobs were added.
In his statement, the Florida Senator expressed that “while far too many Americans remain out of work, it is clear the economic situation for tens of millions of workers and millions of small businesses would be far worse without the Paycheck Protection Program.” Moreover, he noted that “today’s job report makes clear millions of Americans were brought back on payroll last month,” adding that “the PPP helped small business owners re-hire workers and prevented a second wave of layoffs, even as most of the economy remained locked down.”
Finally, the Florida lawmaker concluded by thanking his colleagues because they “were able to come together, multiple times, to unanimously approve and expand a historically successful economic rescue plan.”
In his Rose Garden speech, the President called earlier predictions of the unemployment rate reaching 20% “the greatest miscalculation in the history of business shows.”
