OBAMA: You know, the -- we've gone through the worst recession since the Great Depression. We've got two wars going on right now. We've had multiple crises that have cropped up and people still haven't fully recovered in terms of their job losses, in terms of what's happening in housing.
So, you know, people, I think, understandably, are frustrated. But what they're starting to see is that the economy is getting better. We had the biggest job growth in years last month and I think we'll have decent job growth this month...
KING: Tomorrow it will come out.
OBAMA: Tomorrow we'll get an announcement. Businesses are starting to invest again. Manufacturing is stronger than it's been. The investments that we made early on -- some of which were controversial -- are paying off.
A swell in temporary government hiring for the census drove almost all the job market's gains last month — a huge disappointment to Wall Street and a sign that private employers aren't yet confident enough in the recovery to start adding workers with gusto.
Daunted by the European debt crisis and a falling U.S. stock market at home, American businesses added just 41,000 jobs in May, the fewest since January. The government hired 10 times as many for the national census, but those positions will begin to disappear as summer arrives.
At least on paper, the 431,000 total new jobs was the biggest gain in a decade. The unemployment rate dipped to 9.7 percent from 9.9 percent, mainly because hundreds of thousands of people gave up searching for work and were no longer counted.
"On the surface, they look great," Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors, said of the numbers. "But that beauty was only skin-deep. The private sector is not out there hiring like crazy."
