(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden said the surprisingly strong February jobs report shows his economic policies are working, though he acknowledged that wage growth isn’t keeping up with extraordinary U.S. inflation.

According to data from Labor Department, non-farm payrolls grew by 678,000 per month in July. That’s more than expected. However, wage growth slowed, signaling that overheated inflation will continue to eat into Americans’ purchasing power. 

The report is “a welcome reminder that we’re coming back stronger both as a country and as a people,” Biden said at the White House, but he acknowledged that the last year was “punishing.”

“So many families are still struggling, though, to make ends meet because of inflation,” he added. “I understand that our top priority still must be getting prices under control.”

Biden had previously stated that there were job gains, but did not mention wages. In February, the average hourly earning was not much different from last month.

Although the U.S. has seen an increase of 7.4 million jobs in its economy since Biden became president, this was during the heights of the coronavirus pandemic. Biden spoke out in praise of broad-based gains and said that there had been additions to many sectors. 

Biden’s again called on Congress to pass parts of his “Build Back Better” agenda in his State of the Union speech this week. The plan died last year after West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin said he wouldn’t support it. 

Biden has rebranded his effort as “Building a Better America,” though Manchin remains cool to the notion, citing inflation and excessive government spending as top concerns. With the Senate divided evenly between Democrats and Republicans and the GOP uniformly opposed to Biden’s economic policies, he can’t win their passage without Manchin’s support. 

Cecilia Rouse, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said on Bloomberg Television that Biden’s team is focused on trends in wage growth “because months can be noisy.” 

“We’ve seen real wage growth in lower-paid jobs and industries,” but she acknowledged that “inflation has been higher than nominal wage growth.”

“Look, that’s not what we hope,” she added. 

The president, she said, is “looking for economic policies that generate sustained economic growth, that generate wage increases, that are powered by increases in productivity, and so that is why he is doing all that he can to both reduce prices and costs for families, to increase economic capacity so that we do have a really healthy economic recovery where everybody benefits as we have some economic growth.”

(Updates about Rouse start in 9th paragraph.

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