7 Aug 2010

Obama sees positive in unchanged US jobless rate

4:46 pm on 7 August 2010

US President Barack Obama has welcomed the country's latest employment figures, despite market fears that the economic recovery may be stalling.

The United States Labour Department says the economy shed more than 130,000 jobs in July. The 71,000 jobs added by private companies were far too few to bring the unemployment rate down.

Both figures were worse than expected but the unemployment rate stayed unchanged at 9.5%.

Mr Obama described the figures showing job creation as a good sign, but added that climbing out of the recession will take time.

Many analysts are concerned that high unemployment is undermining the US economic recovery, the BBC reports.

The monthly jobs report is one of the country's most closely-watched economic indicators.

Figures released last week show that US economic growth slowed between April and June, with GDP growing by an annualised rate of 2.4% compared with 3.7% in the previous quarter.

The housing market has also slowed in the past two months.