Obama and Romney offered opposing views of June's jobs report. | REUTERS Obama, Romney spar over jobs

President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney faced off with starkly opposing views of the new jobs numbers Friday — Romney called them a “kick in the gut” while Obama saw “a step in the right direction” — as the U.S. economy added only 80,000 jobs in June and the nation’s unemployment rate remained stuck at 8.2 percent.

“Millions and millions of families are struggling because the president’s policies haven’t worked,” Romney said during a press conference in Wolfeboro, N.H., shortly after the Labor Department reported the new figures, which were widely regarding as disappointing. “The president’s policies have clearly not been successful in reigniting this economy, in putting people back to work and in opening factories across this country.”


The presumptive Republican nominee added, “American families are struggling. There’s a lot of misery in America today. … The president is going to have to stand up and take responsibility for it.”

”The president doesn’t have a plan. … It’s just the same old ideas that have failed,” Romney continued. “It doesn’t have to be this way. America can do better. And this kick in the gut has got to end.”

The weaker-than-expected numbers came as Obama is on the second day of a campaign bus tour in battleground Ohio, where he blamed past Republican policies for the nation’s economic woes and took some shots at Romney’s work for Bain Capital.

June’s job growth is “a step in the right direction, but we can’t be satisfied because our goal was never to just keep on working to get back to where we were back in 2007,” Obama said in Poland, Ohio, as he cited the private sector’s creation of 4.4 million jobs over the past 28 months. “I want to get back to a time when middle-class families and those working to get into the middle class had some basic security. That’s our goal.”

He added, “It’s still tough out there. … We’ve got to grow the economy faster and put even more people back to work.”

About his opponent and Bain, Obama said, “Mr. Romney’s … company, how he started, were called the ‘pioneers of business outsourcing.’ That’s his experience. My experience is working with workers and management to save the auto industry. I’ll fight to save your jobs.”

Obama, who did not directly address the jobs numbers until about 10 minutes into his speech to a crowd of supporters, said Romney is pushing policies that were at the heart of the nation’s economic crisis.

“We tried it in the decade before I took office,” Obama said of Romney’s economic platform. “Let’s look at what happened: We saw us fighting two wars on a credit card, the tax cuts turned a surplus into a deficit. And the lack of regulation resulted in what happened on Wall Street, and we ended up with the biggest crisis that we’ve ever seen.”

“We’ve got to deal with what’s been happening over the last decade, the last 15 years — manufacturing leaving our shores, incomes flatlining. All those things are what we’ve got to struggle and fight for,” Obama said.

The candidates’ economic duel came as experts projected that between 90,000 and 100,000 jobs would be added in June — with a smattering of optimists going as high as 125,000.

Job growth during the April-June quarter has slowed to only one-third of the rate — an average of 75,000 per month — from the 226,000 jobs-per-month rate of the first quarter of 2012, according to the Labor Department.

The stock market dove following the announcement, with the Dow Jones industrial average dropping more than 100 points within seconds of the opening bell and closing the day down 124 points to 12,772.

House Speaker John Boehner immediately pounced on the jobs news, mocking Obama’s recent much-criticized comment that the private sector was “doing fine.”

“Today’s report shows the private sector clearly isn’t ‘doing fine’ and that President Obama’s policies have failed. The president bet on a failed ‘stimulus’ spending binge that led to 41 months of unemployment above 8 percent. He bet on a government takeover of health care that’s driving up costs and making it harder for small businesses to hire,” Boehner said in a statement.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus also went on the attack.

“Once again, the monthly jobs report brings devastating news for the millions of Americans looking for work,” Priebus said in a statement. “The Obama economy is defined by chronically high unemployment. Our country is coming out of the worst quarter of job creation in two years.”

Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) said on CNN’s “Starting Point,” “This is bad news for the president, but more importantly, it’s really bad news for the American people.”

Alan Krueger, chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, said the administration is doing what it could to fix an economy that had been run off course by decisions made when a Republican sat in the Oval Office.

“There are no quick fixes to the problems we face that were more than a decade in the making,” Krueger said. “President Obama has proposals to create jobs by ending tax breaks for companies to ship jobs overseas and supporting state and local governments to prevent layoffs and rehire hundreds of thousands of teachers.”

Krueger noted the economy had added jobs for 28 straight months.

For their part, congressional Democrats tried to deflect blame from Obama and accused Republicans of impeding job growth.

“Next week, instead of working on legislation to create jobs and grow our economy, Republicans’ misguided priorities will be on full display as they pursue yet another fruitless vote to repeal the cost-saving health reform law enacted in 2010,” said Minority Whip Steny Hoyer. “Their do-nothing approach to jobs, which favors confrontation over compromise, has placed a stumbling block in front of businesses desperate for Congress to restore an environment of certainty.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused Republicans of pursuing an “agenda of obstruction and delay.”

And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) promised his chamber would take action.

“To help spark the growth we need, the Senate will move next week to vote on a series of common-sense jobs bills, starting with a tax cut for small businesses that is designed to reward hiring and provide incentives for payroll growth,” he said. “Unless Republicans are truly rooting for our economy to fail, there is simply no reason for them to oppose such common-sense jobs measures.”

The president’s allies in the labor movement also jumped to his defense.

“The cruel reality is Mitt Romney and his Republican allies in Congress are willing to sabotage the recovery in the hope of scoring political points against the president,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. “Republican priorities are more tax cuts for the richest 1 percent and more layoffs for teachers and firefighters.”

Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago professor and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Obama, said the report could have been much worse.

“It’s not a great number, but it’s not much worse than expectations,” Goolsbee said on CNBC. “I think the overwhelming thing that we’re dealing with is that the economy slowed down from last year. When the economy slows down, the jobs dry up. I think Europe has had to do with it.”

Goolsbee found some positive news in the report, noting growth in some sectors of the economy: manufacturing added 11,000 jobs during the month.

“Manufacturing is having its best couple of years in a long time, even in a tough job market,” Goolsbee said, noting job growth during Obama’s first term has outpaced that of the first term under President George W. Bush. “A president got reelected with a job performance that was worse that we’ve had.”

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, called Friday’s numbers “disappointing.”

“It’s not great but the recovery is intact and moving forward,” Zandi said on CNBC. “Hopefully, we’ll gain some strength later in the year.”

The economy requires between 100,000 and 125,000 new jobs per month to keep pace with the growing labor market.

The Labor Department revised its estimate for jobs added in May to 77,000 — up from an initial figure of 69,000, while lowering its estimate for new April jobs from 77,000 to 68,000.

There are 12.7 million unemployed Americans, and 42 percent of the unemployed — 5.4 million laborers — have been unsuccessfully seeking work for more than 6 months. An additional 8.2 million laborers have part-time jobs but are struggling to find new work.

Friday’s report also showed unemployment climbed to 14.4 percent for black Americans but remained largely steady at 7.4 percent for whites and 11 percent for Hispanics. The unemployment rate for women held at 7.4 percent and for men at 7.8 percent.

The health care sector added 13,000 jobs over the month, while mining, construction, financial services and government jobs showed little to no growth.

The federal government, meanwhile, shed 4,000 workers.

The average hourly wage for employees increased 6 cents over the month to $23.50 — the largest hike in average wages since February.

With the economy stalled and Congress gridlocked, the focus shifts to the Federal Reserve, which could attempt to further lower short- and long-term interest rates in the hopes of jump-starting the flagging growth.

“The big question is whether this is a weak enough report to get the Fed to move,” said University of Pennsylvania professor Justin Wolfers on Twitter. “I think it is, and they will.”