Job losses a blow to still fragile economy; EMPLOYERS CUT 85,000 IN DECEMBER 'The road to recovery is never straight,' Obama says
The job market remained in a deep funk in December, according to a government report Friday showing that employers view the economic recovery as too weak and too fragile to begin hiring again on any large scale.</br></br>The pace of layoffs has slowed sharply in recent months, but businesses still cut 85,000 net jobs in December, the Labor Department said. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 10 percent, but economists suspect this is only because hundreds of thousands of frustrated workers stopped looking for jobs.</br></br>With the jobless rate stuck in double digits and Democrats worried that the weak economy will prompt voters to turn on them in fall elections, the White House plans more public events in coming weeks to underscore its concern about jobs and the economy. On Friday, President Obama called the employment report a setback during his announcement of $2.3 billion in tax credits to support renewable energy, which the administration says will create 17,000 jobs.</br></br>"The road to recovery is never straight," Obama said, "and we have to continue to work every single day to get our economy moving again."</br></br>Senate Democrats, meanwhile, have begun crafting a bill to encourage job creation, which Democratic aides said will likely focus on small business, infrastructure spending and "green" energy. The House passed a $154 billion jobs bill in December.