New jobs numbers released this morning show the economy added 431,000 jobs in may as the unemployment rate fell to from 9.9 to 9.7 percent. But as with all employment reports, the government arithmetic shouldn’t fool you — these are disappointing numbers.

All but 20,000 of the 431,000 jobs added were temporary hires for the U.S. Census, and the dip in unemployment rate is the result of the continued exodus of Americans from the ranks of the job-seeking to the merely jobless — 322,000 in May. By contrast, employment decreased by 35,000 to 139.4 million, and the labor participation rate decreased from 65.2 to 65 percent. By another measure, 16.6 percent of Americans remain either unemployed or underemployed.

The numbers fell well short of economists’ more optimistic projections, with some now predicting that unemployment will creep back up to 10 percent over the course of the summer. As a result stocks have fallen sharply — with no help from Hungary’s nosedive — and treasuries have risen. At time of posting, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down more than 2 percent on the day, and is again flirting with the wrong side of 10,000.

And yet the president told a group of truck drivers in Maryland today that the jobs report is a “a sign that our economy is getting stronger by the day.”

“A lot of businesses that were hit hard during this downturn, they are starting to hire again,” he said. “Workers who were laid off are starting to get their jobs back.”

While he acknowledged that most of the growth came from “temporary” Census jobs, he nonetheless called the meager private-sector growth “critical, because when businesses are hiring again, people start spending again and that, in turn, gives businesses more and more incentive to grow.”