The American economy is moving in the right direction, but needs to be accelerated, the US President Barack Obama, said on Friday.
"The evidence that we've seen during the course of this summer and over the course of the last 18 months indicate that we're moving in the right direction. We just have to speed it up," Obama told reporters in response to a question after his remarks on the latest unemployment figures.
"The key point I'm making right now is that the economy is moving in a positive direction, jobs are being created; they're just not being created as fast as they need to, given the big hole that we experienced," he said.
"We're going to have to continue to work with Republicans and Democrats to come up with ideas that can further accelerate that job growth. I'm confident that we can do that," he asserted.
Earlier in a blog post, Christina Romer, Chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, said today's employment report was better than expected.
Private sector payrolls increased by 67,000 in August—the eighth consecutive month of private sector job growth.
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This growth is consistent with other recent data reports indicating that the economy is continuing to recover, albeit at a somewhat slower pace than in the early spring.
"The rate of job growth, however, is not as large as needed to bring the unemployment rate down quickly," she noted.
Indeed, the unemployment rate rose 0.1 percentage point to 9.6 per cent in August, she added.
"The President continues to work with his economic team and with the Congress to identify measures that could help speed the recovery and put the economy on a path of steadily declining unemployment," Roemer added.