guy: friday, the fifth of november. 30 minutes into the treating state -- trading day. taylor riggs in for alix steel. welcome to bloomberg -- "bloomberg markets." we are certainly seeing the fed and the markets seem pretty comfortable as well. taylor: you could say that. i know michael keene is going to nail it when he talks about the goldilocks scenario. at least for now, it is a record high across-the-board. on the russell 2000, that domestic cap focus that are taking the lead -- on equities that are taking the lead. we would be remiss not to mention a five year yield. we came down almost nine basis

points yesterday. we are down about three basis points, coming from 120 just a few days ago to below a 108 on the five year. they do not need to price in as many rate hikes. how are we thinking about the federal reserve on days like today? i have to mention one stock we were looking at yesterday. shares of peloton up more than 30%, down below $60 per share. we want to talk about supply chain issues given the reopening of the economy. guy: what has happened in the speed of the slowdown that we have seen. certainly, that would be a culprit for management on the call we heard earlier. the fascinating -- fascinating to see how things have changed as quickly as they have geared let's talk about the top stories. we mentioned jobs. mike mckee watching job string in the labor market, but wages are pretty high. ira jersey on the bond market reaction.

we are seeing a bond market reaction today. the bank of england certainly focused on the united states and emily wilkins watching the house for a vote on the bills that need to go through for the president's economic agenda to take a step forward. let's deal with the details of the october jobs report. michael mckee, walk us through what are your takeaways for what we learned today. mike: you can see what everybody's take away is because the news has been good from the october payrolls report. not just the 531,000 jobs restored in october, but look at the revision. this was 194,000, but now it has been revised to 312,000. a total for september and august, 325,000 jobs. that is good news. we also saw a small increase in the labor force. a lot of people got jobs and that pushed the unemployment rate down to 4.6%, which falls

into good reason for unemployment of all category. this is the one issue that we still have. participation rate does not move. 61.6%. you can see 4.9% on a year-over-year basis. what were the most interesting job categories this time? you have to look at the services industries because the services industries really saw some changes. 496,000 overall. we have been watching food and drink in places. 119,400 could be higher. a lot of cities, we have not seen everybody return to the office so they do not need those restaurants around all of those office buildings. healthcare and social for years was the leader. still at 46 and this is the question. what happened with 65,000 jobs being lost in education? taylor: thank you. really appreciated. look, over to you. guy: ok. we are obviously watching very

carefully what the applications of all of this are on politics. why aren't the presidents polling numbers doing better if we have such a strong labor market? normally it is the economy on business. one of the reasons for that are the missteps taking place surrounding his economic plan. emily wilkins, washington correspondent from bloomberg government joining us now. the house is trying to figure out how it will make progress today on human infrastructure. i question to you is what is the senate going to do -- my question to you is what is the senate going to do? emily: whatever happens, we know that the senate is going to change it. that is why today there is still a lot of confusion about whether or not a vote is going to happen. you can see moderate members who really want to know that what they passed is going to get done. you also see moderate members with speaker pelosi saying we really need to see the actual

scoring for this bill. how much is it going to spend and how much is it going to raise? still other questions about whether we will see a vote today. -- still a lot of questions about whether we will see a vote today. guy: we need to get back to the labor report because we have a great guest lined up to talk about it. that is the labor secretary jon ferro. jonathan: thank you. secretary walsh, great to have you with us on the program. i want to start with a story. we heard from the president of the united states in the past week. take a listen. >> wages have gone up faster than inflation and we have generated real economic growth. it does not mean that the dislocations are not real. they affect people's lives. jonathon: he says wages have gone up faster than inflation. what data is the president looking at?

marty: we are seeing this worldwide issue. we have seen over the last couple of months wages increasing. we have seen that number catching up to inflation. not quite there yet, but it is heading toward that number. i cannot predict what is going to happen over the course of the next six to eight months. all i can say is the president laid out a plan in january for economic recovery. since that time, five point 6 million people have gone back to the workforce. this month, there is a lot of positives because it is a ever saw a group of businesses that have seen increases in the job market and business related issues in much of different sectors. not just hospitality. i think moving forward, i did not hear the presidents whole speech, so i assume there was context before and after what he said. jonathon: i don't think the context is relevant when you have the statement for all to hear. he said in his words, wages are growing faster than inflation.

i do not see that in the data. that is something uncomfortable moments with they say things that are not accurate. it is not accurate today -- to say that wages are rising faster than inflation in america right now. marty: certainly not in the last couple of months and i asked this question this morning when i sat down with our team and i asked about wages, growth, and inflation. clearly in the first part of this year, we saw some inflation going higher than wage growth. in the last couple of months, we have seen that changing. hopefully this continues. i do not know if that is what the president was referring to. jonathon: the president's statement is the president's statement. i have inflation with a five handle and wage growth year-over-year. i have growth of 4.9%. i want to talk about the vaccine mandate. you put that out there in a piece earlier this week, the participation rate is not recovering in america. i want to understand how you

think that mandate is going to impact potentially that data point. marty: this report shows about 3.8 million americans are not coming back to work because of the pandemic. that is their reasoning for not coming back and what we put out yesterday was not a mandate. it was companies over 100 people either testing -- vaccine or testing. there is an option here and that is what we are pushing for, hopefully to see. hopefully when this gets put into effect and it goes into full effect in january, we will expect to see some of those 3.8 million people who are saying they are not coming back because of the pandemic, we will start to see those folks feel safe enough to come back into the workforce. it is a vaccine. if you don't get vaccinated, you get tested and in the workplace, you have to wear a mask in your own area, you can take the mask off. but it is about protecting the workers. jonathon: i want to focus on a goldman sachs to see referenced

today. when you referenced goldman sachs, can you walk me through the conclusion of that piece that you referenced earlier this week? marty: say that one more time? jonathon: you referenced a goldman sachs piece of research on what would happen to some of the policies introduced. can you walk me through the conclusion of that these? marty: what we are seeing is companies that have put in place vaccine mandate, we have seen 80% to 90% participation rate people getting vaccinated and we are seeing people go back to work. this is happening all across the country. this is about making sure, what we wanted to do was trying to is going to people that we want to create safe working environments so people feel safe about going back in. i would rather be talking about something else today in this period of time, but unfortunately, we are still living in the mess of a pandemic and we cannot overlook the fact that people are afraid to go back to work. that is one of the reasons. there are other reasons. today's report is positive and

we have to continue to build the momentum off of this report. jonathon: i want to read out the conclusion you represent -- referenced earlier this week. here is the conclusion. we are not adjusting our employment forecast, but we see some downside risk to employment and upside risk by the end of 2022 as a result of the mandate. what i want to understand from your perspective, do you accept that? that if you introduce these policies, the supply in the labor market will see near-term down seared -- downturn risks? marty: i don't think there is any upside risk. this is clearly a positive that we are doing. we are asking countries with 100 -- companies with 100 or more people have their employees vaccinated or tested. we cannot forget that a year ago this time, we have people dying in this country at high numbers. we had high infection rate at high numbers. since this pandemic began, 750,000 americans have died.

5 million people in this world have died because of by putting a him very standard in place is not going to impact our economy negatively. if anything, it will have a very positive impact. jonathon: are we picking the bits we like of the goldman sachs research and not the conclusion? is that what we are doing here? marty: i would not say i'm cherry picking anything. i am stating a fact. what we did, we have to look at the whole plan. it is just like me coming on here today and talking about 531,000 jobs. last month, it was 193,000. if i only focused on the good reports, that is cherry picking. i do not cherry pick. jonathon: thanks for joining us today. secretary walsh, the labor secretary. thank you. from new york city, back to you. taylor: thank you, jon ferro. coming up, heidi shierholz director of policy and former chief economist at the department of labor on today's

job numbers. we will do that next. this is bloomberg.

taylor: live from new york, i am taylor riggs. this is "bloomberg markets." the u.s. labor market getting back on track last month due to larger than expected gains and u.s. employers at a -- added 531,000 jobs in october. joining us for a better look at the numbers, heidi shierholz economic policy institute president and senior economist. so great to have you. it felt like sort of the goldilocks for the markets and

the fed. how are you looking at these numbers? heidi: the numbers we saw this morning were really nice start to no gripper -- start to november. 531 jobs added in october -- 531,000 jobs added in october. there were big upward revisions to prior data. we have seen in prior releases come in preliminary releases, a big decline in the prior two months. over the course of the last three months, we have added 442,000 jobs on average. that is lower than the pre-delta period for job growth. pre-delta averaged over 700,000 jobs a month for six straight months in a row. we are not there yet. we are still climbing out of delta, but we are seeing very strong growth. this is just a really solid report. guy: should we be comfortable

with the fact that the participation rate is still relatively low? we are still climbing out of delta. we got good news today out of pfizer in terms of one of their therapeutics. we will be vaccinating children. your expectation would be whether people who are still out of the labor market that are so critical to getting supply side of the labor market functioning properly, will ultimately come back. heidi: yes. they will ultimately come back, but the question is when. this is not a small issue right now. if we had the same labor force participation rate we had pre-covid, we would now have 4.4 million more people in the u.s. labor market -- 4.4 million more people in the u.s. labor market. millions are being kept out of the labor force because of ongoing health concerns and childcare is still not up to adequate levels. we have already seen this school year, thousands of closures.

all of those things -- thousands of school closures. all of those things are keeping parents out of the labor force. so we have some very covid-specific backlogs. the other thing is even in the aftermath of normal recessions, the labor force participation rate resolved more slowly than the overall unemployment rate. that is definitely what we are seeing here. i have every reason to believe that it will. as covid gets in the rearview mirror, it will resolve. the question is how long will that take. one thing that is a point of good news as far as labor force participation goes is the build back better plan being discussed right now. that has a lot of features that will actually boost labor force participation, like childcare. my guess is we will bounce back hired than we were precut -- higher than we were precut.

taylor: we noticed wages as well are perhaps more sticky than transitory. how are you viewing less than transitory inflation? heidi: that is a really good question because we are seeing uptick in inflation, but there is not a match between where we are seeing strong wage growth and where we are seeing inflation. it is not that the strong wage growth is driving inflation numbers. for example, the biggest wage growth we have seen is in restaurants and bars. nobody is talking about a massive inflation and restaurant prices. inflation around the auto sector , where we are not seeing wage increases. it is not that higher wages are driving inflation. that is very covid specific, like a big surge in demand and supply chain issues. so i am not so worried.

we do see that disconnect between wage growth and job growth, but it is true that wage growth is not going to immediately go away once covid is in the rearview mirror because wages are sticky, which is good for workers. guy: can i take you back to the social spending plan that the president is trying to push through the house today, maybe the senate further down the road. are you suggesting that if that plan were to fall flat and ultimately end up not looking like it does currently, that we may have a productivity and participation problem further down the road? heidi: that is a very good question. i think it is less that we will have an additional problem. it is more like we will not be able to go farther than we are now. i think our labor force participation will result from the aftermath of this possession.

-- this recession. but we do have this longer run issue of low labor force participation in the united states, particularly among prime aged women compared to countries around the world that actually have better things in place for child care, healthcare, the kinds of things that make it possible for parents to fully participate in the labor force. i think we will. even without the build back better bill, we will get back to pre-recession labor force participation rates. the question is will we be able to go further? will we be able to catch up to countries around the world that the u.s. lags so far behind in things like women's labor force participation. taylor: on that issue of inequality, we look at a breakdown of the demographic and that has been the focus as the federal reserve is looking at a labor market for all, instead of

some of the historical metrics. if you focus on that and let inflation run hot, it is a tax on the middle class. how are you thinking about a focus on some of the inequalities in the unemployment metrics? heidi: it is a really important thing to do to look not just at the overall unemployment rate. it is a very useful measure. i look at it constantly, but we also need to dig deeper and when you dig deeper, it really does unmask huge disparities. the overall unemployment rate right now, 4.6%. the unemployment rate for white workers, 4%. the unemployment rate for black workers, 7.9%, almost double. it underscores the issue of occupational segregation, discrimination, other factors related to structural racism that lead to these disparate outcomes. it is really important when we

talk about recovery and how do we measure recovery, that we are taking into consideration the fact that the overall unemployment rate really does mask big differences. guy: a hugely important point. a long road ahead. it would be nice if it were shorter. thank you very much. heidi shierholz, the economic policy institute president. what we will be doing next, betting on software. the tech software sector etf. more on that story next. this is bloomberg.

guy: from london, i am guy johnson. this is "bloomberg markets." investor preferences are starting to change with software becoming a much more attractive place. taylor: better than bonds. [laughter] guy: that is a fairly low bar.

let's put it that way. dave wilson, etf friday. looking at this moves. dave: focusing on ishares. it has one of these ungainly names. the kicker -- ticker is easier to work with. it has $6.7 billion in assets. among the biggest holding sales of microsoft. beyond that, you have a lot of smaller companies. 120 stocks or so in this etf. you look at the numbers for october, a record and flow of $527 million. we had a report saying hedge funds are moving in that direction and you can understand it. this group has done relatively well with comparison to the s&p 500.

latest earnings report have companies like cloud in cybersecurity, higher after earnings as well, certainly helping this etf. taylor: thank you as always. bloomberg dave wilson on etf friday. you continue to look at these equity markets. for the 63rd straight -- 63rd record high we have had this year on the s&p 500, dave wilson is nodding his head so we will go with 63. it is until people -- unbelievable. we will continue to do all of this next segment as well. stocks are rising on the jobs report. our next guest continues to climb the wall of worry. this is bloomberg.

taylor: continuing to look at record highs across the board.

63 record highs this year alone for the s&p 500. let's do it all with abigail doolittle who is taking a look at some of those yields. abigail: we have stocks higher. this left continues. the s&p 500 up 0.7%. pfizer on this very encouraging news. this is the end of the pandemic as we know what, up about 7.5%. at one point, up 13%. at that point, the best day ever for pfizer. we also have the russell 2000, that reopening trade outperforming. it is interesting because the nasdaq, which has grown, it is underperforming a little bit. but still up 0.5% and up for a 10th day in a row. the eighth record closing high in a row. what we are looking in white is

a nasdaq 100, the longest running streak of the year since last year. below, we are looking at the 10 year yield. as yields go down, that makes the valuation look more attractive. it also makes assets more valuable as discount rates, in. that is the dynamic that we have seen this year. we are certainly seeing it right now. as we take a look at it from a correlation standpoint, we are going to see not surprisingly that as yields have come in so quickly, the correlation between yields and stocks coming down, that has been the story. when it has been positive, that has been in volatile time period for stocks. it is unclear whether that point remains, but right now it looks like we have more smooth sailing ahead for stocks and tech in particular. guy: it is amazing, the narrative we've got going on considering as we indicated how many record highs we have had.

this market continues to push upwards, immune to all of the news close around it appeared -- immune to all of the news around it appeared let's talk about the payrolls number. what does it mean for investors? esty: it is exactly what you would want it to be. it is definitely strong enough to show that the recovery is picking up again, especially if you add that in with the revision for the previous month after the summer low. we are seeing improvements. vaccination is helping. people are getting back to work. altogether, if anything, this was in line with expectations a bit stronger, but example what you would have wanted to see. taylor: how are you thinking about valuations now that we are at record highs across the board? esty: you really have to frame the valuation picture.

it actually has not deteriorated so much recently because your earnings have been so strong. they tend to be high, but i do not think they are an obstacle to higher markets. they are just -- there is not enough of an argument for markets to move higher. you look at the reopening, the strength of the markets, the strengths of earnings, it is not surprising that valuations are expensive. you have a lot of liquidity, but not an obstacle in my opinion. earnings remain strong, then there is still outside potential. guy: the market feels broader. we are starting to see small caps showing some decent momentum, breaking out. the russell pushing-through records. how good a sign is that if that is happening, that we do have a relatively broad market story and finally, small caps are back participating as well? esty: it is very good news,

absolutely, especially when you consider that tech is managing to do quite well at the same time as the small caps. it is a broader market. it is really coming to the story that there was a bit wall of worry. there were concerns through september and october. the delta variant, supply chain disruptions, inflation staying higher for longer. you had all of these hurdles coming in for investors. obviously, the political, the debt ceiling, and the infrastructure package is as well. i think we have seen the to in those fears and that is also why this rally is broadening and that is why i think it can continue into the end of the year. taylor: what about a peek in yields? it has been removal -- remarkable move lower we have had in yields and that continues today. esty: it is really starting to go back to this do not fight the fed view. the fed has been very clear. they want a break between

tapering and rate hikes. they announced tapering in line with excitations. they will keep an eye on inflation, but they think it is transitory. they think they will abate in the second half of the year, if not sooner. if you think about it, rate hikes are not necessarily the best tool for what we have right now. we have a supply problem more than anything else. i think the fed is sticking to what it said for a number of months now and the market may be starting to realize that a little bit. maybe the last thing to keep in mind is growth will be slowing next year and probably even more so in the second half of next year once all of this reopening hopefully is behind is because we are moving past the pandemic. guy: can i talk a little bit about moving beyond the pandemic? what do you make of how important is the news out of pfizer today? pfizer has a pill that is 89% effective of keeping people out

of the hospital. how big of a step forward is that in terms of getting this economy to accelerate the process of reopening? it strikes me as being huge news. esty: absolutely. any news in that direction has been encouraging. when you start to have treatment in addition to vaccines that are working, it means more and more tools to fight this pandemic. it means more and more possibilities of getting back to normal with more confidence, with less fear. we know workers have stayed out of the labor market due to some fears, due to taken care of family that might have have covid or having it themselves. a lot of these quarantines we have seen globally. it is very encouraging news and anything we get in that direction is just going to reinforce sentiment and the outlook for the first half of next year. guy: thank you for joining us

from geneva. greatly appreciated. i mentioned a moment ago. we will talk more to -- the pfizer pills promising a huge promise in terms of the story of the journey out of this pandemic. i think it is a game changer, what we are seeing in terms of the impact it can have. we will talk about that next and we will get the president's perspective as well. taylor: we will be listening to that and we will see hopefully in the next few minutes. we are waiting on comments with a better-than-expected job support that we got for the month of october. this is bloomberg.

ritika: this is "bloomberg markets." you are looking at a live shot of the principal room. coming up, the uber ceo. this is bloomberg. ♪ ritika: for a check on the first

word news, i am ritika gupta. the house plans to vote on president biden's economic package. the effort structure built in negotiations. they will settle lingering dishes -- lingering differences after promising three potential holdouts that she would make protection for immigrants a top priority once the house issues biden's economic agenda. a company owned by the chinese government is working on an offer to apply hong kong's influential south china morning post to see the most prominent english language. bloomberg has learned the culture is interested in a deal with alibaba. bloomberg news reported that alibaba has come under intense pressure from the chinese government to diverse some of its media assets. germany is reporting record covid-19 infections for a second straight day and a fourth wave of the virus spreads across europe. the surge is threatening hospitals in hotspots and

prompted angela merkel to express concern about the call for the pandemic heading into the winter. she also had coalition talks to form a new government. global news 24 hours a day on air and on bloomberg quicktake, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in over 120 countries. i am ritika gupta. this is bloomberg. guy: it could definitely become a problem quickly. thank you very much indeed. let's tie what is happening with the virus, the spread we are seeing at the moment in europe. the story in the united states and talk about the pfizer news and how this impacts the labor markets. the latest jobs day the out this morning certainly showing the labor force participation rate unchanged. that is a huge deal. that number needs to improve. labor secretary marty walsh joining tom farrell earlier talking about the fact -- joining jon ferro earlier,

talking about the fact that the virus or means one of the main reasons why people will not be going back to work. marty: what we put out yesterday was not a mandate. it was companies over 100 people either testing -- vaccine or testing. there is an option and that is what we are pushing for, hopefully to see and hopefully when this gets put into effect, we will start to see some of those 3.8 million people who right now are saying they are not coming back because of the pandemic, we will see them feel safe enough to come back into the workplace. guy: marty walsh speaking a few minutes ago on bloomberg television. we had some incredibly positive news in terms of the fight against covid-19. pfizer's covid pill, this is a therapeutic remedy to the vaccine and it can be an absolute game changer. 80 9% effective at presenting hospitalization for those that have contracted covid-19.

that sounds like a very high number. bloomberg senior healthcare reporter drew armstrong joining us live to give his analysis. can you give me the magnitude of the impact that this therapy from pfizer could have? drew: i think you said it. this is a really big deal and 89% efficacy is incredibly strong. merck not too long ago came out with an anti-covid pill that shared 50% efficacy and people were saying, this is fantastic. 89% efficacy, obviously the magnitude of improvement on that. to get these type of breakthroughs coming one after another, in particular along with all of the good news that we have had about vaccines over the last year, is an incredibly important step for where we are in the pandemic. it was almost exactly one year

ago today that we got the pfizer results on the vaccine. taylor: talk to us about pricing. i am getting comments from viewers saying pricing for the vaccine is significantly lower than pricing for a pill. does the pill still remain a sideshow? what are pricing conversations looking like? drew: we do not know the price yet, but pfizer has said that they will follow a similar strategy to what they have done with their vaccine where wealthier countries pay a higher price and lower income countries and middle income countries pay a little bit less. lower income countries pay less than that. with their vaccine, they have adopted a not-for-profit strategy. it is yet to be seen if they will do the same thing for the pill. these are cheaper to manufacture. in general, treatments for diseases that are pills, they tend to be more expensive than

what we see with vaccines. i think that remains to be seen and it will be carefully looked at. guy: in terms of what we should see going forward from here, there is huge concern in europe. we are starting to see rising case counts across the continent. the u.k. has led, but we are seeing a pickup in places like germany. really big numbers going into winter. is this the moment, a bit like a year ago, when we saw that amazing pfizer news in terms of the fight -- in terms of the vaccine. is this the moment that we can actually talk about moving from this bigger pandemic to being an endemic problem that we can learn to live with? drew: listen, i thought that when we had the good vaccine news and here we are a year later still dealing with this thing. i think this is phenomenally good news. i think we have also learned not

to underestimate mother nature in particular with regard to this virus. we do have things that come up like drug resistance and things like that that are real problems. remember, a pill like this is only as good as the access. i do not think we are done with the pandemic, but it is good to have presumably once this gets cleared for use, which i assume it will be given these results, it is good to have another tool in the toolbox. taylor: what are you expecting, push forward to monday? the u.s. is reopening for a lot of international travel that up until this point has been pretty much halted and grounded to a stop. how much of this helps from the economic angle? do you have any concerns about health as well? drew: i was always at least in recent months found the travel

restriction is to be interesting from the standpoint that if they are meant to stop covid cases from coming in, we are we have plenty of covid patients in the united states. from an economic standpoint, from a going on vacation standpoint, it is certainly good to see some of these restrictions begin to fall and for the world to start opening back up a little more. we track travel restrictions every week on the bloomberg travel tracker.

one

♪ ritika: time for the bloomberg business flash, and look at the biggest business stories. iag says cash flows were positive and the third quarter and north atlantic demand has begun to surge as the u.s. has began to reopen its borders. iag says bookings are recovering faster than short sales and it

says the premium leisure segment is doing particular well. -- particularly well. peloton shares fell. the fitness company resolves to reduce guidance and apply weaker demand than expected. it lowered its projections for subscribers and profit margins. the company admitted it underestimated the impacts of economic reopening. the u.s. justice department is looking at whether credit suisse is complying with a 2014 guilty plea. and that is your business flash. guy: thank you very much. the president is speaking on the jobs report. let's take a listen. pres. biden: the unencumbered rate fallen again today, down to 4.6%. this included a drop in employment for hispanics. our economy is on the move. we learned that in october, our economy created 531,000 jobs,

well above expectations. we also learned that job growth over the prior two months, august to september, with nearly 250,000 more jobs than previously thought. in total, the job creation in the first full nine months of my administration is about 5.6 million new jobs, a record for any new president. that is a monthly average of over 60,000 new jobs each month. 10 times more than the job creation and three months before i took office. new unemployment claims have fallen every week the past five weeks they are down by more than 60% since i took office and are now at the lowest level since the pandemic started. people continue to move from unemployment rolls to work. unemployed but has increased by more than any other year since 1950. any year since 1950, unappointed

has decreased more in this year than since 1950. not only are more americans working, working americans are seeing their paychecks go up. weekly pay went up in october and average hourly earnings up almost 5% this year. that is more than some of the lowest paid work in our country. men and women working in restaurants, hotels, and entertainment have seen their pay go up 12% this year. over 5.5 million jobs, unemployment down at a record pace to 4.6%. before we passed the rescue plan, forecasters said it would take until the end of 2023 to get to 4.6% on the plummet rate. today, we have reached that rate two years before forecasters thought it was possible. i would humbly suggest this significant improvement since when i took office and a sign we

are on the right track. this did not happen by accident or just because. we laid the foundation for this recovery with my american rescue plan that congress passed at the beginning of my term. it put money in working families pockets and gave families with kids a tax cut each month. it helped keep small businesses going in the dark days earlier this year. and it provided the resources needed to launch one of the fastest mass vaccination programs ever. we got more than 220 million shots in arms in my first 100 days. and we did not stop there. in recent months, we started implementing vaccination requirements to help bring the number of unvaccinated adults down in this country to 60 million now. that is good for our health, but also good for our economy. now, vaccinated workers are going back to work. vaccinated shoppers are going

back to stories. and with the launch of the vaccine for kids ages five to 11 this week, we can make sure more vaccinated children can stay in school. these plans i have implemented, through these plans, economic success, economic rescue and vaccination plan has made an economy the envy of the world. we are the fastest-growing major economy, and one creating jobs at a faster pace. yet, there is a lot more to be done. we still have to tackle the cost that american families are facing. this recovery is faster than almost anyone could have rejected -- could have predicted. that is what the numbers say. we want to make sure that people continue to feel it in their lives and their bank accounts and hopes and expectations. tomorrow is better than today. that is what this is all about. they can sure our recovery is

fully fell. that depends on two things. two things that are within our reach. first, for our economy to fully recover, we need to keep driving vaccinations up and coated down -- covid down. we took two major steps this week. on tuesday, the cdc recommended covid-19 vaccine for children between the ages of five and 11. we prepared for this moment by securing enough vaccine supply for every single child in that age category in america. those doses have started to arrive at thousands of pediatricians offices, pharmacies, schools, and other sites. as a parent of one of the first children to receive the shot said, "today is such a huge sigh of relief." starting next week, a kids vaccination program will hit full strength was about 20,000 trusted and convenient places for kids to get vaccinated.

yesterday, the occupational safety and health administration issued a rule to require employers with 100 or more employees to make sure that each of their workers is fully vaccinated or tests negative for covid-19 at least once a week. the centers for medicare and medicaid services issued a rule requiring that all workers at healthcare facilities participating in medicare and medicaid are fully vaccinated. these rules along with other requirements we have put in place mean that two their's of all workers in the united states are covered by vaccine requirements. these requirements have broad public support and they were. -- and they were. -- and they work. almost over 90%. this is good for the workers, for their colleagues, for their

loved ones and for their communities. it is also good for the economy. in a recent university of chicago survey, every economist agreed that requiring staff vaccinations and regular testing among large employers would promote the economic recovery that is faster and stronger than it is now. analysts at goldman sachs project these kind of requirements could lead to 5 million more americans reentering the workforce. that is because they feel safer to do so. it is because there are fewer disruptions in things like childcare. again, reading covid-19 remains one of the most important ways to strengthen our economy. not just save lives, but to strengthen our economy. we are making progress. as of this week, 70% of american adults are fully vaccinated. more than 193 million americans are fully vaccinated. it was less than one present when we took office 10 months

ago. and one more piece of good news. last night, we received promising news about another potential covid treatment. a pill developed by pfizer that may dramatically reduce the risk of being hospitalized or dying when taken shortly after infection. if authorized by the fda we may soon have pills that may treat the virus of those who become infected. we have already secured millions of doses. it would be another tool in our toolbox to protect people from the worst outcomes of covid. look, it is important to remember we need to prevent infections, not wait to treat them once they happen. the vaccination remains the best way to do that. the pandemic is not yet behind us, but within this week's announcements, vaccines for kids, more adults getting vaccinated,