President Obama will be in Pittsburgh today, talking about the economy.

Best to keep the tone humble, sir:

The Pittsburgh region’s jobless rate rose by one-tenth of a percentage point in April to 8.5 percent, but the economy showed signs of growth by adding almost 18,000 jobs and increasing the number of local workers and those seeking jobs, an economist said Tuesday.
“That is the starting point for a self-sustaining economic expansion,” said Robert A. Dye, vice president and senior economist at PNC Financial Services Group Inc.
The area’s economy created 17,800 jobs in April, boosting the total to 1,117,900. Still, that was below the April 2009 level of 1.123 million jobs.
The jobless rate of 8.5 percent, adjusted for seasonal hiring, was 1.5 percentage points higher than the 7 percent rate in April 2009. The number of jobless workers in the region, at 104,500, was just 900 more than in March but was 18,300 more than a year ago, the state’s Center for Workforce Information and Analysis said.
The small increase in the jobless rate is not as significant as the increase of about 3,700 workers in the civilian labor force, Dye said. That shows more people are either working or actively seeking jobs, he said.
But Frank Gamrat, an economist and senior research associate at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy, a think tank in Castle Shannon, said the April unemployment report is more indicative of a stagnant economy in the seven-county region.
“It’s like (the economy) wants to recover, but something’s holding it back,” Gamrat said.

I wonder what that something could be.