Wednesday July 15, 12:21 AM
Obama expects US unemployment to rise further
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WASHINGTON (AFP) - President Barack Obama said Tuesday he expects the US unemployment rate, currently at 9.5 percent, to rise further over the coming months.
"This has been a more severe recession than we've seen since the Great Depression," Obama said, adding that the United States would "probably continue to see unemployment tick up for several months."
In June, Obama said he expected the jobless rate to enter double digits this year. It already tops 14 percent in Michigan, the historic heart of the country's auto-making sector.
The US president noted that "we have seen some stabilization on the financial markets, and that's good," but said that history showed recoveries can take more time.
"Historically, even after you start into a recovery, positive growth, hiring, typically lags for some time after that," he said.
Unemployment rose to 9.5 percent in June, according to Labor Department figures, shedding 467,000 jobs in that month.
That figure was 45 percent up on the previous month's losses, and pushed the level to a 26-year high.
The figures dashed hopes of a rapid exit from the recession currently afflicting the world's largest economy.
Obama said in June that he thought unemployment would reach 10 percent this year.
The president later traveled to the state of Michigan -- home to auto giants General Motors (NYSE: GM - news) and Chrysler (Xetra: 710000 - news) , both of which filed for bankruptcy and rely on government assistance to survive -- where he unveiled an initiative aimed at increasing the number of college graduates as a way to help strengthen the economy.
According to the White House, community colleges, which serve some six million students, represent the highest number of students in higher learning in the United States.
Obama's initiative would allocate 12 billion dollars over 10 years to increase the number of US community college graduates by five million by 2020.
Community colleges offer two-year associate degrees in technical fields, and often cater to students that cannot afford a four-year university, want to take classes to improve a technical skill, or use it as a stepping stone to enter a university.
"The hard truth is that some of the jobs that have been lost in the auto industry and elsewhere won't be coming back," Obama said in a speech at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan.
"They are casualties of a changing economy. And that only underscores the importance of generating new businesses and new industries to replace the ones that we've lost, and of preparing our workers to fill the jobs they create," he said.
However "we know that in the coming years, jobs requiring at least an associate degree are projected to grow twice as fast as jobs requiring no college experience. We will not fill those jobs -- or even keep those jobs here in America without the training offered by community colleges."
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