Bad job news hurts Obama's campaign message

MINNEAPOLIS -- The suddenly dismal news on American jobs is a blow to President Barack Obama's re-election argument that he has been a steward of recovery. It's heightened White House anxiety over global threats to U.S. economic growth -- and the president's political prospects, too.

The economy, Obama conceded Friday, "is not growing as fast as we want it to." Taking a harsher tone, Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney declared that the country appeared to be "moving backward." He sought to drive home a political point from the nation's first increase in joblessness in almost a year.

After a winter when the job trends were in his favor, Obama has been forced onto the defensive by three months of lackluster to dismal growth. Confronted by Friday's report of a feeble 69,000 new jobs and an uptick in unemployment to 8.2 percent in May, Obama vigorously renewed his demand that Congress step up and enact some of his jobs proposals.

Calling the eurozone's debt crisis a "shadow" hanging over the U.S. economy, Obama made his most urgent plea yet for measures that he said would "serve as a buffer in case the situation in Europe gets any worse."

The jobs numbers, issued early every month, have become the year's dominant economic barometer, a baseline from which to gauge Obama's and Romney's political fortunes in an election that rides on the pace of a post-recession recovery.

Romney, responding to the first report since he clinched the GOP presidential nomination, called the figures "devastating news." In an interview Friday with CNBC, Romney said that Obama's policies and his handling of the economy had "been dealt a harsh indictment."

Obama was in Minnesota to push his proposal to expand job opportunities for veterans and to raise money for his campaign.

He said private business has created more than 4 million jobs over the past 27 months, but, he added, "as we learned in today's jobs report, we're still not creating them as fast as we want." Still, he said, "we will come back stronger; we do have better days ahead."

The economy, struggling to recover from the worst recession since the Great Depression, has had to fend off a number of external pressures, from high oil prices to natural disasters and, now, economic troubles in Europe and a weakening economy in China.