Unemployment fell to 3.5% under Biden. For how much longer?

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden keeps seeing good economic news and bad public approval ratings. The unemployment rate fell to 3.5% in March. More than 236,000 jobs were added. But there has been no political payoff for the president.

Going forward, an emerging challenge for Biden might be the expectation that unemployment will get much worse this year.

This is the opinion of the Federal Reserve, which expects the jobless rate to hit 4.5%. And the Congressional Budget Office (5.1%). Even the proposed budget that Biden just put forth models an increase (4.3%) from the current rate. Many Wall Street analysts are, likewise, operating under the shorthand that the Fed tames inflation by raising interest rates, which in turn causes demand to tumble and joblessness to rise.