The U.S. jobless rate edged lower in April, but the government said Friday that job growth in the world's largest economy was modest.

The Labor Department said the unemployment rate fell a tenth of a percentage point from March to 8.1 percent last month. But for the second straight month, more workers left the labor market and thus were not counted in the U.S. employment survey.

At the same time, employers added another 115,000 workers to their payrolls last month, but that was well below the 160,000 figure that economists had predicted. The April figure also fell below the 154,000 jobs added in March and signaled that corporations have markedly slowed their hiring. The American economy had added more than 250,000 jobs a month early in the year.

The state of the U.S. economy has emerged as the dominant issue in the country's presidential election campaign, heading to the vote in November.

The Republican challenger, one-time venture capitalist Mitt Romney, called the latest employment report “terrible and very disappointing.” He said U.S. economic fortunes “seem to be slowing down, not speeding up. This is not progress.”

U.S. President Barack Obama, a Democrat seeking a second four-year term, told a group of high school students just outside Washington that the economy is improving and had created 1 million jobs in the last six months. He said he would urge Congress next week to approve measures to accelerate job growth even more.

“My message to Congress is going to be, just saying no to ideas that will create new jobs is not an option. There's too much at stake for us not to all be rowing in the same direction.”

A government critic, Robert Romano of the Americans for Limited Government group, told VOA that the drop in the U.S. jobless rate is deceptively favorable.

“The fact that people are giving up on work and that's what's leading to the unemployment rate to drop is not a very good indicator for the state of the American economy and the American people have a right to know what's really going on is that there's no work to be found and folks are just not being counted on that rate.”

Earlier in the year, Mr. Obama touted the labor market's robust job growth. While he remains personally popular, many voters have questioned his oversight of the nation's economy.

Now, analysts say the U.S. could be headed to a third straight year in which the early promise of economic advances tailed off in the ensuing months.

The U.S. has recovered only slowly from its deep recession in 2008 and 2009, its worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The country's economic indicators regularly show mixed signs of improvement followed by retreats, especially with employment and overall economic growth.