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President Barack Obama promised a fresh slew of measures to boost the ailing US economy Friday after fresh data showed unemployment was again on the rise. Obama said he would outline a new package of stimulus measures next week,after a keenly awaited Labor Department report showed the economy lost 54,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate edged up to 9.6 percent.
Although the job losses were much less than the 120,000 slump expected by Wall Street economists,hiring was not substantial enough to return millions of crisis-hit Americans to work.
Obama acknowledged the report was “not nearly good enough” but focused on news that the private sector created 67,000 jobs in August,many more than expected.
“That’s positive news and it reflects the steps we have already taken to break the back of this recession,” he told reporters at the White House. But it was not enough to offset the government releasing around 114,00 temporary census workers,which helped nudge up the unemployment rate. Still,the figures were also greeted positively on Wall Street.
The figures were “hardly great news but could have been much worse,” said Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics.
Stocks surged on news that the report had cleared rock bottom expectations.





