Romney Says Jobs Report Is 'Terrible' and 'Very Disappointing'
PITTSBURGH - The new jobs report is "terrible" and "very disappointing," Mitt Romney said today, adding that Americans awoke to "not good news this morning."
"We should be seeing numbers in the 500,000 jobs created per month. This is way, way off from what should happen in a normal recovery," Romney said in an interview on "Fox and Friends" this morning.
The economy created 115,000 jobs in April, which was below economists' expectations of about 160,000 new jobs.
The private sector, which factors out government layoffs and hiring, saw 130,000 workers added to payrolls.
The presumptive GOP presidential nominee said the reason the unemployment rate is dropping is not because more people are finding jobs but because "more people are dropping out of the workforce than you have getting jobs."
Asked whether he is concerned that President Obama will be able to campaign and promote the jobs numbers, Romney indicated he was not.
"I think the American people know that their lives are not better than they were three and a half years ago," he said. "They know that the incomes in this country have not risen, they've fallen. They know the president in his first months in office said that he would hold unemployment below 8 percent and we've had 38 straight months of unemployment above 8 percent."