By CNN Political Unit
(CNN) — While Friday’s new employment numbers show the U.S. economy added 175,000 jobs in May, Americans are “still waiting for the recovery President Obama promised years ago,” according to the Republican National Committee’s chairman.
“President Obama has given plenty of speeches about jobs, but he’s done very little to support the kind of commonsense pro-growth policies Republicans have offered year after year,” Reince Priebus said in a statement. “Instead, his government has been wasting precious time and money.”
The new job numbers mark a slight improvement from April, when a revised 149,000 jobs were created, but still falls in line with average job growth over the last three years.
The report was stronger than expected, and stock futures headed slightly higher in premarket trading, shortly after the report was released. Economists surveyed by CNNMoney had expected the report to show 158,000 jobs were added in May.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate ticked up to 7.6% from 7.5% in April.
Republicans have consistently hammered the Obama administration’s economic policies following the release of the monthly job numbers.
Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia, on Friday blamed the “failed policies” of the Obama administration and Senate Democrats.
“From President Obama’s costly and intrusive takeover of health care to their seemingly unquenchable thirst to spend, Washington’s Democrats appear unwilling to accept the empirical evidence presented time and time again that demonstrates their economic approach simply isn’t working for the American people,” said the vice chairman of the House Committee on the Budget.
The White House maintained “more work needs to be done” but argued Friday’s report “provides further confirmation that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression.”
Alan Krueger, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in the statement that “now is not the time for Washington to impose self-inflicted wounds on the economy.”
“The Administration continues to urge Congress to replace the sequester with balanced deficit reduction, while working to put in place measures to create middle-class jobs, such as by rebuilding our roads and bridges and promoting American manufacturing,” Krueger said.
CNN’s Ashley Killough, Paul Steinhauser and CNNMoney’s Annalyn Kurtz contributed to this report.
The-CNN-Wire/Atlanta/+1-404-827-WIRE(9473)
™ & © 2013 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.
