President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. formally appeared Friday to introduce a new set of top economic officials, building out the team that will help drive his administration’s efforts to restore financial stability to businesses, protect workers and promote American industry.
Mr. Biden has selected Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island as his commerce secretary, Mayor Martin J. Walsh of Boston as his labor secretary and Isabel Guzman, a former Obama administration official, as head of the Small Business Administration. He has also selected a former aide, Don Graves, as deputy commerce secretary.
Mr. Biden’s selections were announced on Thursday, and he is introducing the four officials at an event in Wilmington, Del.
With his latest picks, Mr. Biden said he had finished naming what he described as a “historic cabinet,” and he said he had fulfilled his promise to assemble a group that “looks like America.”
“This will be the first cabinet ever that is evenly composed with as many women as men in the cabinet,” he said. “This will be the first cabinet ever with a majority of people of color occupying this cabinet.”
Mr. Biden said he had given “serious consideration” to nominating one of his former primary rivals, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, for labor secretary. But Mr. Biden said he and Mr. Sanders agreed that they could not imperil the razor-thin Democratic majority in the Senate by opening Mr. Sanders’s seat to a special election in Vermont.
The event comes as the country’s economic recovery from the pandemic faltered with
new data released on Friday showing that employers cut 140,000 jobs in December as virus cases across the country increased. It was the first net decline in payrolls since last spring’s mass layoffs, and though the December loss was nowhere near that scale, it represented a discouraging reversal for the once-promising recovery. The nation’s economy still has roughly 10 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic.
Mr. Biden said the December job losses showed that “we need to provide more immediate relief for working families and businesses now,” and he said he would be “laying out the groundwork” next week for another relief package.
The president-elect also called the distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine a “travesty,” and said billions of dollars would be needed for that effort.
The announcement came on the same day that
Mr. Biden’s transition team said he planned to release nearly all available coronavirus vaccine doses “to ensure the Americans who need it most get it as soon as possible.” The move represents a sharp break from the Trump administration’s practice of holding back some of the vaccine for people to receive their second dose.
