The administration’s line is that there is steady, if slow, progress in repairing the economic ruin President Obama repeatedly blames on his predecessor, Republican George W. Bush.
The economy added about 162,000 jobs in March, the most in nearly three years. A large percentage of the gains were temporary census workers hired by the government. The US unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent. The additional 123,000 private-sector jobs were the most since May 2007.
The economy is growing again, but at a pace unlikely to quickly replace the 8.4 million jobs erased in the recession, which began in late 2007. More than 11 million people are drawing unemployment insurance benefits.
“We’ve got a long way to go,’’ said Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council. “We’ve inherited a terrible situation, the most pressing economic problems since the Great Depression in our country.’’
Christina Romer, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said consumers still face “a lot of headwinds’’ from the financial crisis. For example, debt and credit difficulties are hampering stronger job growth.
They were echoing the words of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who said last week that the administration is “very worried’’ about the difficulty of returning to a more normal jobless rate of about 5 percent.
Summers said Obama is preoccupied with creating jobs. “The trend has turned, but to get back to the surface, we’ve got a long way to go,’’ Summers said.
Obama is moving ahead with his legislative agenda after a victory on health care, and Summers said he believes Congress will pass new oversight rules for the financial industry. The Wall Street meltdown was largely blamed for the recession and the near collapse of the global financial system.
“I expect that reform is going to pass,’’ Summers said. Obama wants a measure on his desk within two weeks.
