WASHINGTON — US President Joe Biden said Friday that US economic growth is the "fastest in 40 years" as his administration is "the first in history to add jobs every single month in our first six months in office and the only one in history to add more than four million jobs during the first six months." In remarks at the White House on the July jobs report, Biden noted, "While our economy is far from complete and while we doubtlessly will have ups and downs along the way as we continue to battle the Delta surge of COVID, what is indisputable now is this. “The Biden plan is working, the Biden plan produces results, and the Biden plan is moving the country forward," Biden said. He affirmed, "We have put in place the tools to prevent this Delta variant wave of COVID-19 from shutting down our small businesses, our schools, and our society." "Cases are going to go up before they come back down. This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated," he reiterated. "About 400 people will die because of the Delta variant in this country, a tragedy because virtually all of these deaths were preventable if people had gotten vaccinated." He stressed, "My message today is not one of celebration. It"s one to remind us we"ve got a lot of hard work left to be done, both to beat the Delta variant and to continue our advance of economic recovery." The Department of Labor indicated earlier Friday that the US economy added 943,000 jobs in July, the biggest gain since August 2021, as the unemployment rate dropped to 5.4 percent. "Forecasts have projected that we will see the fastest economic growth in nearly 40 years to come in coming months, and we are moving in the right direction," Biden told a news conference. But he cautioned that there might be bumpy patches in the growth, evidenced by the sharp slowdown in jobs growth in April versus March. "Let"s be clear our economic plan is working. I never said, nor seriously ever suggested, that climbing out of the deep, deep hole our economy is in would be simple," he said. The US economy expanded at an annual rate of 6.4 percent in the first quarter of the year after shrinking 3.5 percent in 2020 due to COVID-19 lockdowns which left 21 million people unemployed between March and April. More than a year into the pandemic, restoring jobs growth has been one of the biggest headaches of policymakers. The April jobs report, for instance, showed just 266,000 positions being created versus forecasts for 1.0 million new jobs. The Federal Reserve has forecast an economic growth of 6.5 percent for all of 2021 although it said it does not expect "full employment" — defined by a monthly unemployment rate of 4.0 percent or lower — before 2023. Unemployment stood at 6.1 percent in April. Biden said his administration would also enforce more tightly labor rules denying financial assistance for those who turned down work offered to them. — Agencies