Biden Insists Americans Feel ‘Financially Comfortable’ As Inflation Hovers Near 40-Year High

President Joe Biden is touting a study from the Federal Reserve that found Americans said they felt financially comfortable.

Biden spoke about the May jobs report on Friday, but some of his statistics appeared to be outdated.

“Since I took office, families are carrying less debt, their savings are up,” Biden said.

He went on, “ recent survey from the Federal Reserve found that more Americans feel financially comfortable than at any time since the survey began in 2013.”

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His comments come after the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the economy exceeded expectations and added 390,000 jobs in May. Additionally, unemployment stayed at 3.6%.

However, the president cautioned that the stretch of strong job gains may start to level off.

“As we move to a new period of stable, steady growth, we should expect to see more moderation,” Biden said.

He added, “We aren’t likely to see the kind of blockbuster job reports month after month like we had over the past year. But that’s a good thing. That’s a sign of a healthy economy .”

Biden cited a study by the Federal Reserve that found a majority of Americans said they were “at least doing financially okay” in 2021.

During the first year of the pandemic, Americans’ personal saving rates hit a record high of 33% as they curtailed spending and stored up cash. Additionally, Americans reportedly paid off $100 billion in credit card debt in 2020 and into the first quarter of 2021.

But as the country emerges from the pandemic and inflation is hovering near 40-year-highs, it appears that those trends are reversing.

And as gas and food prices soar, NPR reports that Americans are increasingly turning to food banks for their groceries.

CNBC reported in Sept. 2021 that credit card debt has swelled since the pandemic began, and overall, Americans are now reportedly holding record amounts of debt.

And as the amount of debt has increased, so has the number of delinquent payments, and Americans have an average of $9,000 less in their savings compared to last year. Meanwhile, the record-high savings rate has plummeted to the lowest level since 2013.