President Obama on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

Courtney Corbisiero
August 08, 2013
07:05 PM EDT

President Barack Obama joins Jay Leno for a taping of the “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” at the NBC Studios in Burbank, Calif., Aug. 6, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Obama stopped by The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Tuesday, part of his two-day West Coast trip to discuss housing and the economy.

The President discussed the improvement in the housing market and the shrinking deficit, but acknowledged that Americans all over the country are still struggling and that we still have a lot of work to do. “Wages and salaries haven’t gone up,” President Obama said. “Middle-class families are still struggling to make sure they can pay for their kids’ college education. They're still concerned about whether they can retire.”

And what Washington should be thinking about every single day is how do we make sure we’ve got an economy where if folks work hard, they can find a good job that pays a decent wage; they can send their kids to college; they've got health care they can count on; they can retire even if they don't get rich -- or even if they're not rich; and that we’re creating these ladders of opportunities for people to get into the middle class.

Watch the full interview from The Tonight Show night here.

Earlier on Tuesday, President Obama was in Phoenix, where he laid out his vision for a housing system that promotes the American dream of homeownership. On Wednesday, the President answered questions from homeowners, renters, and prospective buyers in an interview with Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff.

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