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| photo: conservativedailynews.com |
(Yahoo! News) By Caren Bohan - President Barack Obama will forecast a U.S. unemployment rate averaging 8.9 percent in 2012 in his annual budget on Monday - but before the document was even released a top aide called the projection "stale" and said it should be lower.
"We would certainly lower our forecast of the unemployment rate from the figures that will appear in Monday's budget if we were to do another forecast today," top White House economist Alan Krueger said in an e-mail.
"The forecast of the unemployment rate that will accompany the budget should be considered stale and out of date," wrote Krueger, who is chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
In mid-November, when the economic forecasts were compiled, the nation's latest reported unemployment rate was 9 percent. Last month, the jobless rate dropped to a three-year low of 8.3 percent as employers added 243,000 new jobs.
Because of that, Obama's aides said their previous forecasts are already out of date.
Under pressure to reduce unemployment in an election year, Obama has welcomed a series of monthly reports showing unexpected declines in the unemployment rate.
The unemployment estimates that his administration will release next week underpin the White House forecasts on budget deficits and the national debt. In addition to projecting an average unemployment rate in 2012 of 8.9 percent, the official forecasts estimated the rate would average 8.6 percent in 2013.
Read full story at Yahoo! News...
