“I would hope that if this package were approved, we would return to full employment next year,” Yellen told CNN’s Jake Tapper in “State of the Union.”
“The Congressional Budget Office released an analysis recently and showed that if we don’t provide additional support, the unemployment rate will remain high for years to come,” she added. “It would take (until) 2025 to bring the unemployment rate down to 4% again.”
Yellen’s assessment comes as the White House is pushing the president’s package into Congress, where it faces resistance from Republicans who oppose its price, as well as some of its key elements. Lawmakers are under pressure to approve an aid package, as Americans continue to suffer financially amid the economic consequences of the pandemic.
Full employment does not mean that the unemployment rate is zero, but rather that employers generally hire as many skilled professionals as they need.
The January employment report showed that, although 49,000 jobs were created last month, the country has still fallen by almost 10 million jobs since before the crisis. The report also detailed that the unemployment rate fell to 6.3%, exceeding economists’ expectations, marking the first drop in two months.
The CBO said in a report released last week that the number of employed Americans will not return to its pre-pandemic level until 2024, showing how long the job market still needs to go to heal after suffering the most severe loss ever recorded in April, when 20.5 million jobs were lost and the unemployment rate soared to 14.7% in a single month, with the coronavirus devastating the country.
Biden’s plan, which the secretary said was “large enough to meet all needs” facing the country’s economy, includes a wide range of immediate assistance for families in distress, such as $ 1,400 stimulus checks and extended aid unemployment, nutrition and eviction and long-term changes, such as a minimum wage of $ 15 an hour.
This story is emerging and will be updated.
CNN’s Tami Luhby, Katie Lobosco, Chris Isidore and Anneken Tappe contributed to this report.
