Obama highlighting manufacturing gains in the US as part of economic focus

President Barack Obama is putting a manufacturing focus on his revived economic message, calling attention to industrial gains that have helped restore some higher-wage jobs during the recovery from the Great Recession.

Obama visits a steel manufacturer Friday in Princeton, Indiana, as part of a new fall political campaign push to promote his pocketbook policies and to claim credit for the upturn in the economy.

The visit falls on the third annual observance of National Manufacturing Day. It comes a day after Obama delivered a stout defense of his economic stewardship and called the November elections a referendum on his economic proposals.

It also comes on the same day that the government will announce new unemployment figures for the month of September.