At an economic inflection point, Biden leans into expansive, populist agenda

The unemployment rate reached 5.2 percent last month, a far cry from a pandemic high of 14.8 percent in April 2020. With the aid of vaccines, businesses nationwide have reopened and students have started returning to classrooms, even though the highly contagious delta variant continues to overwhelm hospitals, particularly in the U.S. South. Retail sales also improved last month, an uptick that caught economists by surprise, as Americans continued to spend more online and in stores.