President Obama attempted to find a silver lining in Friday’s June jobs numbers, which came in lower than expected.
With just 80,000 jobs added in June while the unemployment rate held steady at 8.2 percent, the latest report from the Labor Department suggests that the economy is recovering at a slower rate than many experts anticipated. But Obama said in a speech in Ohio that the numbers are “a step in the right direction.”
“We've been steady and we've worked hard," he said, waiting until about ten minutes into the speech to mention the jobs numbers. "We had to make adjustments and deal with some disappointments but we came back stronger and we came back tougher. And that’s what America and that’s what Ohio’s been doing.”
By contrast, Mitt Romney jumped on the report on Friday morning, calling the latest numbers “devastating.”
"The president's re-election slogan may be 'forward,' but it seems like we've been moving backward," said Romney, who has made the struggling economy the centerpiece of his campaign. "We can do so much better in America."
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