Another hotter-than-expected employment report Friday buffeted Joe Biden's labor-market performance, with 15.6 million more jobs now than when the president took office.
But what remains to be seen is if voters give him credit.
The record so far suggests that the answer will be no. What voters have told pollsters again and again is that their perceptions of Biden's economic record often begin and end with inflation.
The president and his allies nonetheless responded in force Friday, with Biden saying in a statement "the great American comeback continues" and adding that unemployment has now been at or below 4% for the longest stretch in 50 years.
Friday's overall numbers saw the economy again defy worries of a slowdown and add 272,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in May, while the unemployment rate ticked up to 4% from 3.9% in April.
When Biden took office in 2021 following a year of pandemic job losses, about 142.9 million Americans were working. The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday put that figure over 158.5 million.
"This is the coveted soft landing that many people said wouldn't happen," acting Labor Department Secretary Julie Su added in a Yahoo Finance interview.
But in perhaps an acknowledgment of the political reality, Biden, in his statement, quickly pivoted to prices.
"I will keep fighting to lower costs for families like the ones I grew up with in Scranton," he said, focusing equally on inflation as on his jobs record.
There are five more job reports (as well as five Consumer Price Index readings) between now and when voting ends this fall in the race between Biden and former President Donald Trump.
Left unsaid is another factor in Friday's numbers that could be a complication for the White House. The strong numbers could ease pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates before the election.
Such a move from the central bank would help Americans by lowering borrowing costs. That could in turn lower the ultimate price of buying a home, a top-tier voter concern.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues are set to gather next week with no expectation of a change in interest rates at that meeting. Market expectations of a rate cut in the follow-up meeting in July fell Friday from 21% to 8.8%.
In a live Yahoo Finance interview Friday, Citi senior global economist Robert Sockin maintained that a July rate cut could still be on that table, saying there is still "enough of a softening" in the labor market to get the Fed worried about recession risks alongside "enough cooling in the inflation numbers to justify cuts."
A persistent voter focus on inflation
The question for Biden and his campaign is whether any message focused on jobs can break through. For their part, Republicans are unlikely to change their focus from hammering home the 20% increase in prices since Biden took office.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican, even brushed past the jobs gains entirely in a statement Friday, choosing to focus instead on how under Biden "a paycheck doesn’t stretch as far as it once did."
The polling data has also shown an uphill climb for Biden, even in data gathered by his allies.
A recent survey from Blueprint 2024 — a Democratic-aligned group — found that 91% of respondents described inflation as a "serious problem." Among those respondents, 37% also described inflation as among "the most important issues."
Just 25% said the same about jobs and the economy.
And an Economist/YouGov poll released just this week provided further evidence of voter priorities: 25% of respondents listed "Inflation/prices" as their most important issue. "Jobs and the economy" came in second but far behind at 12%.
For those jobs-focused voters, an array of Democratic figures highlighted Friday's data and tried to tie it with Biden's record.
Sen. Martin Heinrich, the Democratic chair of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, said in just one example that "Democrats have brought on a new era."
But Pangaea Policy founder Terry Haines recently told Yahoo Finance in a live interview that voters may already have decided. The "economic narrative here is pretty well baked in," he said, adding that the dim perceptions "shadow [Biden's] campaign."
Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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