Biden: Economy will begin adding jobs in spring

People will see job growth in the U.S. by spring, Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday.

The vice president suggested that the U.S. economy would see a positive number of jobs created in the next few months, after nearly two whole years of negative job growth.

"I say they're going to start to see unemployment abate," Biden said during an appearance on the "Today Show" on NBC. "In the spring, you're going to see a net increase on a monthly basis in jobs."

The U.S. economy has shed jobs every month since January of 2008, with the exception of November of 2009, during which the U.S. added 4,000 new jobs, according to preliminary estimates.

President Barack Obama made clear in his State of the Union address that jobs would be his top priority in the coming year, after a year in office which saw hundreds of thousands of jobs eliminated.

To that end, congressional Democrats have been crafting varying spending and tax credit initiatives to spur job creation, especially as voters' anxiety about the economy remains high ahead of this fall's midterm elections.

Biden emphasized that job creation wouldn't come all at once, but defended the initiatives Obama laid out in his speech as contributing to job growth.

"The idea that we're going to get 7 million people who were unemployed as a result of the recession reemployed is not going to happen," he said.