President Joseph R. Biden was in Chicago Wednesday, June 28 to deliver an address on his economic plan, which is more popularly known as “Bidenomics.” The three-pillar plan, according to Biden, is to grow the country’s economy from the middle out and bottom up by making public investments, empowering middle class workers and assisting small businesses.
The Biden administration has created 13 million jobs in just two and a half years. On the eve of another presidential election campaign, the greatest legacy of Bidenomics and the Biden administration just might be having lowered the national unemployment rate to a historic low of 3.4% for the first time in 54 years. The current unemployment rate in Atlanta was hovering just above 3% as of May, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
One of the keys to Bidenomics will be jobs: creating jobs, sustaining jobs and making job opportunities more plentiful in cities like Atlanta. United States Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm spoke with The Atlanta Voice following her visit to Georgia Tech Wednesday morning. While on campus Granholm met with Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens and learned more about how the city and the region are preparing for all of the clean energy jobs coming to Georgia.
“For decades manufacturing jobs were leaving this country and we did nothing about it,” said Granholm, the former Governor of Michigan. “What this president has done has intervened to make sure we’re doing the manufacturing, the whole thing, all supply chains, particularly in this clean energy economy. For me, that’s music to my ears.”
As governor Granholm worked to keep automobile manufacturing companies in Michigan because of the number of jobs those businesses offered. “It didn’t work because we didn’t have the incentives to be able to compete globally,” said Granholm. “This effort at bringing back manufacturing and building out this clean energy economy is going to create a million jobs per year.”
The jobs will be able to be filled by everyday Americans, according to Granholm who added that 75% of the jobs will not require a four-year college degree.
“The president has forged out a new economic path,” said White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi, who was also in Atlanta last week. “Bidenomics is centered around investing in America, empowering our workers and put competition and choice in the marketplace because we know that drives down costs.”
Granholm added, “These are good paying jobs. The south is the new battery belt.”