| President Biden is happy about the economy today, specifically new jobs numbers. And yet polls show many Americans are pessimistic. Let's untangle the conflicting state of the economy. By many traditional measures, it's pretty good Unemployment has never been this low in the pandemic, and jobs added to the economy have never been this high. That's according to jobs numbers from February that the government released today. The U.S. economy, with coronavirus infections going down, created 678,000 jobs last month, The Post's Abha Bhattarai and Andrew Van Dam report. Post economic columnist Heather Long calculates that more than 90 percent of jobs lost during the pandemic have returned. And employment fell to a low of 3.8 percent, the lowest it's been since the pandemic started. (It was 14.8 percent in April 2020.) The economy could be back to normal by this summer, Abha and Andrew report. "My plan to build an economy from the bottom up and the middle out is working to get America back to work," Biden said in a statement. But, inflation  Gas prices in Chicago this week. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) | As the economy revs back up, goods costs more. Groceries cost more. Gas and heating homes cost more. Wages have gone up too, but they're not quite able to match that. Wages are growing faster than inflation over a two-year period, but lately they haven't kept pace. Sticker shock is real. As we've talked about in a previous newsletter, inflation feels so visceral to Americans because it's right there, every time we buy something. And Biden's task continues to be to convey to Americans that he feels their pain ― even as there's little he can do about it and as he's seeing data that, overall, shows the economy is doing pretty well under his watch. A name you should know in connection with Jan. 6: Roger Stone  Roger Stone outside D.C.'s Willard Hotel on Jan. 5, 2021. ("A Storm Foretold") ((A Storm Foretold)) | Who he is: A 69-year-old Republican operative who made his name working for the Nixon campaign — and for being willing to hit opponents below the belt. You'll hear the term "dirty trickster" ascribed to him. He's also a longtime friend of former president Donald Trump and was convicted in June 2020 of impeding the investigation of Russian election interference — before Trump commuted his sentence. Why he's in the news now: Stone was filmed off and on over a period of a couple years by some Danish filmmakers making a documentary about him — including in the time after Trump's loss. The Post's Dalton Bennett and Jon Swaine got ahold of the footage and reported today on what Stone was up to in the frantic, harrowing time for the nation between Trump's loss and Biden's inauguration. What they found: The documentary and The Post's reporting suggest Stone was deeply involved in Trump's public efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, guiding people — and baseless conspiracy claims — to Trump, and helping set up "Stop the Steal" protests across the country, events that Trump encouraged and that the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab determined played a key role in whipping up those who took part in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Stone connected throughout with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, right-wing groups whose members now face serious charges related to the riot. And then he pushed Trump heavily for a pardon for it all. (Stone didn't get it.) What's next for him: Stone has tried to distance himself from the leaders of these right-wing groups and the "Stop the Steal" efforts. He pleaded the Fifth rather than talk to the Jan. 6 committee, but it will certainly have a lot of other evidence related to Stone to work with. The documentary on him will be out later this year. Reader question: Why hasn't the U.S. stopped importing oil from Russia? Well, some lawmakers from both sides of the aisle think we should. Asked Thursday about banning Russian oil, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said: "I'm all for that. Ban it." The Post's Scott Clement notes that majority of Americans, including majorities in both parties, say in a new NPR-PBS-Marist poll that they would be okay with higher energy prices to punish Russia. But Biden, already facing criticism over ever-increasing gas prices and record inflation, has said he doesn't want to push prices at the pump even higher. The average price per gallon today is about $3.84, which is up more than a dollar from a year ago. Read this from The Post's Philip Bump for more on the nuances of stopping oil imports from Russia. | 
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