Obama administration calls jobless numbers encouraging

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Armed with a positive jobs report, President Obama headed south Friday to push his plans to deal with the economy and job creation.

The Obama administration called the latest jobless numbers “encouraging,” but warned that the labor market remains “severely distressed.”

The Labor Department reported that about 162,000 jobs were created in March, but that the national unemployment rate remained at 9.7%. About a quarter of the jobs were temporary positions linked to the census.

“While this is the most positive jobs report we have had in three years, there will likely be bumps in the road ahead,” said Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. “The monthly employment and unemployment numbers are volatile and subject to substantial revision. Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative. It is essential that we continue our efforts to move in the right direction and generate steady, strong job gains.”

Obama is expected to echo those themes when he speaks at Celgard, a battery maker in Charlotte, N.C. The company has received federal funds and is hiring and expanding, the White House said.

Obama is also likely to discuss his program to use $30 billion -- money had been set aside to bail out Wall Street -- for loans to small businesses.

For the Obama administration, the positive jobless numbers and a slight upward revision of past numbers mean that the economy seems to have bottomed out and has definitely moved from negative to positive territory.

But the economic impact of the recession has been felt everywhere. More than 8 million jobs have been lost, and it will take years before a significant chunk is recovered. More than 11 million people are drawing unemployment insurance benefits, according to the government.

Republicans lost no time in criticizing the administration, despite the positive report.

“Any report showing that the economy added jobs is clearly a better alternative to one showing that it lost more jobs,” House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia said in a statement.

“Yet we must set our sights higher, our goals larger, and our actions bolder. Americans deserve far more than the up-and-down, roller-coaster-like unemployment reports of the past few months. We must work to move beyond this uncertainty by creating a sustained period of real job creation, and that can only start once Washington stops actively impeding economic growth,” he stated.

Cantor called for federal debt reduction and again attacked Obama’s healthcare overhaul, key planks that the GOP is planning to stress during this midterm election year.

-- Michael Muskal

Twitter.com/LATimesmuskal