President Barack Obama, while happy that the economy is growing again, won’t be satisfied until job growth returns, one of his chief economic advisers said Thursday.
“The president’s focus is on: How do we translate a turnaround in economic growth into tangible job creation and a tangible improvement in the standard of living of working people?” said Austan Goolsbee, a member of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers.
If the U.S. economy can continue to grow at the third quarter’s 3.5 percent annual pace over the next year, it will create a lot of jobs and reverse a national unemployment rate that is approaching 10 percent, he said.
“You can’t turn job creation around until after you get the economy going,” he said.
Some economists are concerned about whether a recovery will stall absent the Cash for Clunkers program that drove auto purchases and an $8,000 credit for first-time homebuyers that boosted home sales and construction.
Goolsbee said Recovery Act dollars were designed to be spread out over 24 to 36 months and that several other programs are ramping up.
“About one-third of the money has been spent or obligated,” he said. “There is still two-thirds of it to come.”
Given that some economists didn’t expect economic growth to return until 2010, Goolsbee said the nation’s ability to go from a 6.4 percent annual rate of GDP decline in the first quarter to a 3.5 percent rate of increase in the third quarter was dramatic.
“Nobody should underestimate how deep and scary the hole was when we started,” he said.
Aldo Svaldi: 303-954-1410 or asvaldi@denverpost.com
