Obama claims credit for strong U.S. jobs numbers
PRINCETON, Ind. — Boosted by the lowest jobless rate in six years, U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday heralded September’s hiring rate as the longest uninterrupted stretch of private sector job growth in U.S. history and declared that the United States is surpassing combined job creation in other advanced economies.
The Labor Department’s report Friday that employers hired 248,000 workers and that the jobless rate fell to 5.9 per cent came as Obama was reviving his economic message ahead of the November midterms, calling attention to industrial gains that have helped restore some higherwage jobs during the recovery from the Great Recession.
“We’re on pace for the strongest job growth since the 1990s,” Obama said.
Obama was speaking at a steel manufacturing plant in Princeton, Indiana, as part of a new fall political campaign push to promote his pocketbook policies and to claim credit for the upturn in the economy. The visit coincided with a White House announcement for a competition to create a manufacturing innovation institute concentrated on photonics, or the use of light in technology, ranging from lasers to telecommunications.
With large rolls of sheet steel behind him, Obama held a campaign-style question and answer session where he faced pointed questions about his push to raise the minimum wage, escalating health care costs and government environmental policies about coal.
Obama defended increases in the minimum wage, noting that most major companies pay over the current minimum, said health care premiums are rising at the slowest rate in 50 years and said coal is facing tough competition from other energy sources.
“The real war on coal is natural gas,” he said.
As Obama casts economic gains on his watch, he is walking a fine line between bullish assurances that the recovery is real and acknowledgment that millions of Americans are still jobless or underemployed.