President Obama hailed a 29th straight month of job creation today, saying the economy is slowly but surely heading in the right direction. Obama also said, "let's acknowledge -- we've still got too many folks out there who are looking for work." The president addressed the employment issue as his aides and their Republican foes stressed different numbers in today's "good news, bad news" jobs report from the Labor Department. As Democrats pointed to the 163,000 jobs created in July -- higher than expectations and the biggest number since February -- Obama said the economy has created 4.5 million new jobs in those 29 months; he stressed that he inherited the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. "We knew ... this would take some time," Obama said at an event to advocate new middle class tax cuts. For Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and other GOP members, the key statistic is the fact that unemployment rate increased, from 8.2% to 8.3%. "Today's increase in the unemployment rate is a hammer blow to struggling middle-class families," said Romney in a statement. But the higher rate reflects that more people are re-entering the workforce, a potentially good sign for Obama. Alan B. Krueger, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, wrote on on the White House website: "While there is more work that remains to be done, today's employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression."
