White House calls drop in unemployment rate an ‘encouraging’ sign

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The White House on Friday called the latest unemployment numbers an encouraging sign that the labor market was improving, but noted that there was much still be done before the economic pain of recent years would be eased for many Americans.

The Labor Department said the unemployment rate fell to 9.7% in January, the first time it has been in single digits since September. However, the other report that the number of lost jobs had increased by a net of 20,000 indicated that job creation had failed to take hold as strongly as the administration had hoped.

“While unemployment remains a severe problem, today’s employment report contains encouraging signs of gradual labor market healing,” Christina Romer, chair of the White House council of economic advisers, said in a statement.

“Obviously, the unemployment rate remains unacceptably high, and is even worse for certain demographic groups such as teenagers and black or African American workers,” she said.

As the White House has maintained through the last year, Romer said that the recovery was under way but that the high jobless numbers were an indication of how much further the administration has to go.
President Obama is expected to echo that theme -- that things are getting better, but more needs to be done -- when he appears at a jobs event Friday.

In this midterm election year, Obama has called job creation the main priority of his administration. The Senate is expected to begin voting on its jobs plan next week, a package including tax credits for employers, infrastructure funding and extended unemployment benefits. The House has already passed its own jobs package.

The most troubling number in the Labor Department was the revision increasing the number of jobs lost in the downturn. “We now know that the total job loss over the recession was more than 1 million larger than previously estimated,” Romer said, bringing the total of jobs lost to more than 8 million.

-- Michael Muskal

Twitter.com/LATimesmuskal