President Obama called the latest jobs numbers “a step in the right direction” on Friday, even as the June figures showed a third consecutive month of sluggish growth.
Obama, speaking during a two-day campaign swing via bus through the key swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, acknowledged that the economy still had a ways to go and was not going to fully recover overnight.
“I want to get back to a time when middle-class families and those working to get into the middle class have some basic security. That's our goal,” Obama, tieless and with his sleeves rolled up, told the crowd at an elementary school in Poland, Ohio. “So we've got to grow the economy even faster.”
The president, saying he wanted to return the middle class to the security it enjoyed in decades past, also firmly contrasted his policies with that of his presumptive GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, and declared that voters could help break the “stalemate” in Washington.
“We've got to deal with what's been happening over the last decade, last 15 years: manufacturing leaving our shores, incomes flat-lining,” Obama said. “All those things are what we've got to struggle and fight for.”
Obama’s comments came the same day that the Labor Department announced that the U.S. economy created 80,000 jobs in June, with the unemployment rate holding steady at 8.2 percent. Romney described the figures as a “kick to the gut” and blamed Obama’s policies for slowing the economy.
The economy had added an average of more than 200,000 jobs in January, February and March, as the country experienced a mild winter. But since then, job creation has plummeted, with between 68,000 and 80,000 jobs created in the last three months.
For more on Obama's remarks, click here.
