Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images
President Barack Obama speaks on the economy at North Carolina State University in Raleigh on Wednesday.
"The challenge of making sure that everyone who works hard can get ahead in today's economy is so important we can't wait for Congress to solve it," he said. "Where I can act on my own without Congress, I'm going to do so."
The battleground state of North Carolina, for decades a hub of textile and furniture manufacturing, has moved sharply to the right in the last two elections under a Republican governor and a Republican-controlled state assembly.
As in those elections, voters remain focused on the weak job market during the sluggish recovery. Despite gradual improvement, North Carolina's jobless rate has been higher than average. Unemployment peaked at 11.3 percent shortly after the recession ended, and has since fallen to 7.4 percent, as of November, some four-tenths of 1 percent higher than the national rate at that time.
With Congress sitting on its hands, the White House has won little support for legislative initiatives to help create jobs for the 5 million U.S. factory workers sidelined since the Great Recession. Many are among the 1.5 million people who had been relying on extended unemployment insurance. Since those benefits expired in late December, Congress has been bickering over whether to restore them.