Despite high inflation, Biden’s Labor secretary predicts job growth at KS event with Davids
U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said Wednesday in Kansas that he expects continued job growth nationwide, even as the Federal Reserve takes aggressive steps to reduce inflation.
Walsh’s comments came at a stop in Edgerton alongside Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids as she faces a tough reelection bid against Republican Amanda Adkins, a former Cerner executive, in the Kansas 3rd Congressional District.
The U.S. Federal Reserve has been aggressively raising interest rates in an attempt to slow the economy and lower inflation. Historically, such efforts have also resulted in a slowed job market and higher unemployment rates.
Walsh and Davids held a joint event Wednesday highlighting commercial drivers training programs and efforts to solve supply chain issues that have contributed to inflation.
“We’re still averaging 400,000 jobs added this year,” Walsh said. “We’re in a unique time right now with inflation and this is unlike any other time. I’m not an economist but we can’t compare this, what we’re going through right now, to a recession in the past.”
Walsh argued that President Joe Biden’s infrastructure law and other pieces of legislation would play a key role in bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., unclogging the supply chain and reducing inflation.
“We are at a great moment of opportunity in America right now when you think about it, coming out of a pandemic that wreaked so much havoc in our country over the last two and a half years,” Walsh said.
He touted Davids’ role in helping pass the infrastructure legislation.
The 3rd District race between Davids and Adkins is one of the most competitive House races this year. Republicans across the board have leaned into inflation as an indictment of Democratic leadership
Adkins dismissed the idea that Davids had helped the economy.
“If Sharice Davids is strengthening the economy, that’s news to Kansans who have seen their 401k accounts decrease by 25% and are paying $8,800 more for goods and services this year because of inflation. Our country is on the verge of a recession thanks to Davids’ failed economic policies,” Adkins said in a statement.
Davids pointed to a shortage of truck drivers and framed inflation as an issue of workforce within the transportation sector.
“We’re seeing higher prices, I know folks at home have felt it at the grocery store, at the gas pump, at the pharmacy,” Davids said. “The best way for us to combat that is by investing in our workforce.”
This story was originally published October 19, 2022 at 12:24 PM.
