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This is FRESH AIR.
I'm Tonya Moseley.
This time last summer, President Joe Biden was talking about his run for a second term on what his administration called Bidenomics, a plan to rebuild the economy by creating jobs, fixing aging infrastructure, and investing in manufacturing and clean energy.
While a series of recent reports show that the Biden administration's efforts have spurred recent job growth in the last three years, most notably in the Midwest and Southeast, so called left behind counties, places that experienced decades of divestment.
There are several reasons for this growth, most notably the trillions of dollars from the Administrations Infrastructure Investment and Jobs act and Inflation Reduction Act.
A recent report in the New York Times notes that in terms of job growth, left behind counties experienced three of their four worst years since the great Recession on Trumps Watch, but went on to point out that many left behind counties are also solidly republican or have moved to the right since Trump first ran.
With us to talk about all of this is David Matlin, a senior fellow and advisor to the American Worker Project at the center for American Progress, an independent, nonpartisan policy institute.
He's also the author of hollowed out why the economy doesn't work without a strong middle class, and has written for several publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New Yorker.
David Matlin, welcome to Fresh Air.
Thanks very much for having me.
Well, I want to start by kind of getting in the weeds on what we can attribute this job growth to.
So during the pandemic, we know that both the Trump and Biden administrations basically lavished communities with pandemic assistance and forgave loans for business owners.
How much of a factor does that play into the job growth that we're seeing now?
I think it's a significant factor.
You can see that, especially when you compare how fast the United States recovered jobs compared to most other countries and especially countries that didn't have related kinds of programs where we helped ensure businesses weren't going to collapse.
We provided them with money.
We also provided individuals and local governments with funds.