Washington ? President Bush sought Saturday to squeeze more political mileage out of news that American employers added the most workers in four years, while Democratic rival John Kerry chose to highlight the still-flat manufacturing sector and blame it on Bush.

The incumbent president running for re-election and the Massachusetts senator who wants to replace him went head-to-head on the jobs issue, each via the weekly radio addresses.

Polls consistently show that jobs and the economy are voters’ top concerns and that a majority favor Kerry on those issues. With nearly 2 million jobs lost since Bush took office in 2001, Democrats eager for an area where the president is politically vulnerable have hammered him for months for having the worst job-creation record since the Depression.

As a result, Bush reveled for a second day in a Labor Department report showing the nation’s employers swelled payrolls by 308,000 in March. He also gave the figures top billing during an appearance Friday in West Virginia — one of the many politically key industrial states where job losses are an especially sensitive issue.

“This week we received powerful confirmation that America’s economy is growing stronger,” Bush said in his radio address. “People are finding jobs, and the nation’s future is bright. America’s families and workers have reason to be optimistic.”

The jobs report, which when released Friday pushed stocks higher on Wall Street, also revealed a stronger picture than previously thought for the first two months of the year. Revisions to earlier payroll figures found that companies added 205,000 jobs in January and February, instead of the 118,000 reported last month.

And, for the first time in 44 months, the nation’s factories did not shed jobs. But they didn’t add them either, and Kerry — chosen to deliver the Democratic response to Bush’s address — seized on that.

“We now hear the administration claiming success,” said Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. “There is not a single month of this administration that has seen the creation of a single manufacturing job.”