President Barack Obama said Tuesday that unemployment will continue to grow as hiring lags behind other signs of economic recovery. “How employment numbers are going to respond is not yet clear,” Obama told reporters at the White House. “My expectation is that we will probably continue to see unemployment tick up for several months.” The national unemployment rate is currently 9.5 percent, the highest in 26 years. Obama said the stabilization of financial markets has allowed banks to begin to lend again. But he said his administration knows that the “single biggest challenge” is whether workers are able to get well-paying jobs. More than 2 million jobs have been lost since Congress approved Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus plan. Without that government intervention, Obama said, many states would be in worse condition because they would have had to fire more teachers, firefighters, and other workers. The U.S. president defended his agenda of trying to reform health care, energy, science innovation, and infrastructure as the key to sustained economic growth. “Those foundations are so critical because we've got to find new models of economic growth,” he said. Obama spoke to reporters after meeting with Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands. The president was scheduled to travel to Michigan to promote investment in community colleges. The state's unemployment rate is the country's highest, at 14.1 percent.
