The April jobs numbers, while still in positive territory, were not what we needed to see. AAM’s Executive Director, Scott Paul, called the numbers “well below the trend of the past two years.”

President Obama took the opportunity to praise the continued growth of manufacturing jobs:

Manufacturing continues to be a bright spot and added 16,000 jobs in April.  After losing millions of good manufacturing jobs in the years before and during the recession, the economy has added 489,000 manufacturing jobs since January 2010.  To continue the revival in manufacturing jobs and output, the President has proposed tax incentives for manufacturers, enhanced training for the workforce, and measures to create manufacturing hubs and encourage the growing trend of insourcing.

Meanwhile, Governor Romney thinks that we can do better:

"Well, we should be seeing numbers in the 500,000 jobs created per month. This is way, way, way off from what should happen in a normal recovery. The reason that you’re seeing the unemployment rate go down is because you have more people dropping out of the workforce than you have getting jobs. It’s a terrible and very disappointing report this morning. Clearly the American people are wondering why this recovery isn’t happening faster, why it’s taking years and years for the recovery to occur and we seem to be slowing down, not speeding up. This is not progress; this is very, very disappointing and a lot of American people are having very hard times and this is not good news this morning.”