Supply chains, including ports, rail lines, and trucks that move goods throughout the country, have reached never-before-seen levels of stress following the strength of recovery under President Joe Biden, which helped create the fastest quarter of economic growth since the mid-1980s.

In a news release dated March 1, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) said that Pres. Biden’s creation of more than six million jobs, alongside increases in cargo volume, contribute to the stress, as recent shifts have caused disruptions in the supply chain.

"Over the course of the past year, as part of the president’s Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force, the Department of Transportation, along with the Departments of Commerce and Agriculture, have been part of an administration-wide effort to improve the flow of goods, make our supply chains more resilient, and lower prices for Americans,” the release said.

In response to the Biden administration's announcement of the creation of a supply chain task force, which includes the DOT, the department released a dashboard that tracks issues within the supply chain and progress across four metrics.

According to the release, by creating this dashboard, the DOT hopes to keep the state of the supply chain transparent to the public as well as show what needs to be improved and what is currently improving in different areas of the supply chain.

The indicator currently tracks "measures and indicators of intermodal throughput such as volumes of U.S. imports and exports, transportation labor numbers, the number of container ships anchored and loitering near U.S. ports, and more," the release said.