Trump hails jobs report, but unemployment rate still high

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump took a victory lap Friday morning after the government reported surprising job gains for last month, seizing on the data to predict that the worst of the coronavirus pandemic and its economic disruption was in the rear-view mirror.

The unemployment rate dropped to a better-than-expected 13.3%, but that is still on par with what the nation witnessed during the Great Depression.

Trump spoke from the Rose Garden hours after the Labor Department said that U.S. employers added 2.5 million workers to their payrolls last month. Economists had been expecting them instead to slash another 8 million jobs amid the ongoing fallout from the response to the pandemic.

“This shows that what we’ve been doing is right," Trump said of the jobs numbers. "This is outstanding what’s happened today."

Trump pitched himself as key to what he claimed would be a “rocket ship” economic rebound, and offered that as an argument for his reelection in November. “I’m telling you next year, unless something happens or the wrong people get in here, this will turn around,” Trump said.

It’s unclear how many jobs lost as a result of the pandemic are permanently lost, whether the reopenings in states will create a second surge of COVID-19 deaths. In addition, the report from mid-May doesn’t reflect the effect that protests across the nation have had on business.

Some economists forecast the rate could remain in the double-digits through the November elections and into next year.

Trump predicted a swift bounce-back for an economy that was largely shuttered to slow the spread of the virus, saying the economy would see a “very good” July and August and a “spectacular” fall. “We’ll go back to having the greatest economy anywhere in the...