WASHINGTON - The inconclusive employment report on Friday gave ammunition to both political camps, fueling Republican complaints that the White House's agenda is holding back the U.S. economy, while Democrats said it helps demonstrate the case for Biden's jobs proposals. 

President Joe Biden called the job gains in the report "historic progress" in a speech from Rehoboth Beach, Del. on Friday. "It's testament to the new strategy that growing this economy, not only growing it, we're going from the bottom up in the middle out."

"It should be surging," Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, said of the economic recovery on a call with reporters. Brady blamed Biden's proposal for tax increases, and spending efforts including the $1.9 trillion stimulus that the GOP unanimously opposed, as the reason the recovery in his view has slowed. He added that Biden's "policies are clearly holding America back economically."

The report showed economic progress as the nation rebounds from the coronavirus and the vaccination campaign accelerates across the country, with employers adding about 559,000 jobs in May. But it included some troubling signs as well, as roughly 8 million Americans remain out of work compared to before the pandemic. Initial hopes that the U.S. economy would rapidly recover all the lost ground from the pandemic have now all but fizzled, putting new pressure on policymakers to take further action.

The president spoke with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., on Friday as they try to hammer out a bipartisan agreement on infrastructure spending, a deal that has so far eluded negotiators. A spokesperson for Capito said the two continued negotiating the package and agreed to speak again on Monday.

"Now is the time to build on the foundation we've laid. While progress is undeniable, it is not assured," Biden said in his speech. "We have a chance to seize on the economic momentum from the first months of my administration."

The president also said that it "makes sense" for enhanced unemployment benefits to expire in September, as they are set to under current law, following intense criticisms from the GOP and business groups that they are discouraging workers from rejoining the labor market.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki also signaled a dramatic shift Friday in the administration's posture on the unemployment benefits. She said Republican governors who have cut the benefits "have every right to," and she evaded a question about whether the administration believes the benefits are contributing to a slower pace of job growth.

"That's a really difficult thing to analyze," she said.

Psaki's message Friday was markedly different from comments she made after last month's jobs report.

"We are seeing little evidence that enhanced unemployment benefits are currently impacting or affecting Americans' willingness to work," she said in early May.

In his remarks, Biden pointed to projections by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development that showed the U.S. economy would grow at 6.9 percent this year, which would be the fastest pace in about four decades. The White House has pointed out that no other major country besides the U.S. is now projected to grow faster than expected before the pandemic, a fact the administration attributes to the $1.9 trillion relief plan approved by Democrats this spring.

"No other major economy in the world is growing as fast as ours," Biden said while in Delaware. "No other major economy is gaining jobs as quickly as ours."

Restaurants, bars, and other parts of the service sector drove much of the increase in hiring despite the complaints about a labor shortage. The unemployment rate ticked down to 5.8%, the lowest rate since before the pandemic. Wages also grew relatively quickly, rising by an annualized rate of 7.2% - likely faster than any period since the 1980s - said Jason Furman, an economist who served in the Obama White House.

Still, the number of people participating in the labor market held largely steady, a worrisome indicator for an economy supposed to be springing back to health. April showed particularly sluggish jobs growth. And employment in construction fell as that industry struggle struggled with high lumber prices and uncertainty related to supply chain bottlenecks that have plagued the economy. The U.S. is not expected to return to its pre-pandemic employment levels for more than a year at the current rate of growth.

"It's not an eye-popping report, but a very solid one - right down the fairway," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, in an interview. "Half a million [new jobs] in any other time would be boom-like, but it's 'meh' in the sense we're still down 7.6 million jobs from pre-pandemic times."

Republicans were quick to point to the shortcomings in the report and argue it underscores the weakness of Biden's economic policies.

"As we emerge from the virus, our economy should be booming, but today's lackluster jobs report shows President Biden's policies have stalled our recovery," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., wrote on Twitter. "Washington needs to stop paying people NOT to work. Bidenomics is bad for America."

Republicans have in particular seized on the $300 per week unemployment benefit approved by Democrats as part of the stimulus package in March as holding back hiring. Those payments will soon stop in more than 20 states, all run by Republicans.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., slammed the policy in an op-ed Friday, lauding Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., for cutting off the benefits but blaming the policy for hurting business's ability to hire new workers.

"Much of the reason has to do with the Biden administration's unemployment benefits, which are so massive that they're incentivizing would-be workers to stay home instead of looking for jobs," he wrote in the Tampa Bay Times. "Even with vaccination rates soaring and COVID-19 case counts plummeting, the administration's policies are now, for millions, precluding getting back to normal."

Before April, some Wall Street forecasters projected that the economy would add over one million jobs per month. After the disappointing numbers in April, forecasters revised their estimates down to around 650,000 new jobs - a prediction that still proved too optimistic.

"If you look at the CBO forecast, we are way behind," said Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork, referring to the estimates by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. "It's not sufficient to say we only fell slightly below consensus expectations. That consensus had the slowdown baked into it."

The jobs report showed that 7.9 million Americans were not working because their employer had closed or lost business due to the pandemic, according to Constance Hunter, the chief economist at KPMG. At the time the survey data was collected, 48% of working-age adults had not yet received even one dose of the vaccine.

"That seems pretty huge. That's a lot of people," Hunter said.

White House officials pointed to strong growth in manufacturing, particularly in the auto industry, as a sign that the economy is beginning to spring back to life. Biden's jobs and families proposal calls for spending $4 trillion on infrastructure, child care, and other domestic policy policies, although that spending would not begin until after the U.S. is already set to be back at full-employment under most economists' projections.

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The Washington Post's Tony Romm contributed reporting to this report.