Biden Photo: CFP

US President Joe Biden on Saturday launched a series of conversations with ordinary Americans by calling a woman who lost her job due to the pandemic, in an effort to showcase his direct contact with his fellow citizens.

"The White House will launch a new effort for the president to regularly communicate directly with the American people," White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Friday.

Due to COVID-19, the conversation was held via telephone from the Oval Office in Washington to Michele, a mother from Roseville, California who lost her job at a start-up company because of the economic crisis sparked by the pandemic.

She had written to Biden to tell him about her struggles and her search for a new job.

"Like my dad used to say, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It's about your dignity, it's about your respect, it's about your place in the community," the 78-year-old president told Michele, in a video of the call posted online by the White House.

Biden also took the opportunity to promote his $1.9 trillion stimulus package that his Democratic party is preparing to adopt in Congress, despite the lack of Republican support, as well as the massive vaccination campaign he has promised.

"We're so glad that we have you focusing on that," said Michele, whose last name was withheld, adding that her parents had just made their appointment to get their COVID-19 vaccinations.

With this new conversation series, Biden is seeking to show his empathy - and to mark a break from his predecessor Donald Trump, who was accused by critics of not caring about the fate of millions of Americans affected by America's health and economic crises.

Biden's phone calls are meant to be a modern-day iteration, in the era of social media, of the radio fireside chats held by president Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s as a way to invite himself into American homes.

Trump only sporadically took up this tradition, in the form of pre-recorded videos published on Facebook.

Biden on Friday seized on feeble US employment data to argue the world's largest economy needs his $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package.

The closely watched jobs data showed the unemployment rate dropped to 6.3 percent in January, but the economy added only 49,000 jobs, the Labor Department said.

The anemic report made plain the ongoing struggles in the US as Americans cope with the largest COVID-19 outbreak in the world.

"I believe the American people are looking right now to their government for help," Biden said after a meeting with top Democratic lawmakers.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would push for rapid approval of the package.

"Hopefully in a two-week period of time, we'll send something over to the Senate," she told reporters.

The House of Representatives approved a budget proposal by a narrow margin on Friday, following Senate Democrats who in the wee hours of the morning won a procedural vote setting the stage for passage of the president's relief bill.

AFP