TOPEKA (KSNT) – The White House Press Office has released a report on Monday detailing the “economic progress” that has happened in Kansas since President Joe Biden took office in 2020.

The report focused on the areas of state employment, unemployment insurance claims, gross domestic product (GDP), supplemental poverty and vaccination rates. This report was one among 49 others which were released to every state in the U.S. that concentrated on the same factors.

When President Biden took office, our economy was in crisis and COVID-19 was wreaking havoc on our country. Thanks to his American Rescue Plan, unemployment is near historic lows, the vast majority of Americans are vaccinated, the number of adults with a positive outlook on their overall financial well-being reached an all-time high last year, the number of Americans relying on government unemployment benefits has dropped by more than 90%, and new businesses are being created at record rates.

White House Press Office

According to the Biden Administration, 26,900 jobs have been added to the Kansas economy since January 2021 and the state recovered 77% of the jobs lost between February 2020 and April 2020. The state’s unemployment rate also reportedly fell from 3.8% in January 2021 to 2.4% in April 2022 which is equal to the lowest unemployment rate for the state on record.

The initial claims for unemployment insurance in Kansas fell 93% since Biden took office; from 17,000 to about 1,200 for the week ending May 28, 2022. The quits rate, which is a measurement of labor market strength, rose from 2.3% in January 2021 to 2.6% in March 2022.

The state’s GDP grew by 1.5% at an annual rate in the 4th quarter of 2021. According to the Biden Administration, this is a substantial acceleration compared with 2020 growth which saw Kansas’ GDP fall 1.1%.

A record number of new business applications were filed during Biden’s first year in office compared with any other year since the series started in 2005. The report from the Biden Administration also claimed that a tax plan from Congressional Republicans would have raised taxes by 53.5%, an increase which could have resulted in up to $900 in additional tax payments.

Kansas’ supplemental poverty measure was projected to be 7.6% in 2021 which is lower than 11% on a comparable measure in 2018 according to the Biden Administration. The poverty measure for children under 18 in Kansas was projected to be 5.3% in 2021, lower than 9% on a comparable measure in 2018.

As for vaccinations, the Biden Administration claimed that the number of fully vaccinated people in Kansas went from 0 in January 2021 to 1,800,000 as of May 2022.