U.S. Focused On Faster Economic Growth

U.S. Focused On Faster Economic Growth

It is imperative that the U.S. economy grows more quickly to address the growing unemployment problem of the country, Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Chairman, said on Monday.

Bernanke said the staggering decline of the country’s employment rate, which dropped rock bottom to 8.3 percent in February from 9.1 percent last summer, was "somewhat out of sync" with the current pace of economic growth.

U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) grew 3 percent in the 4^th quarter of last year but has slowed down to just below 2 percent in the first quarter of this year.

“The recent drop in the unemployment rate could reflect an effort by businesses to recalibrate their payrolls after unusually heavy job cuts during the recession. If this is the case,” he said, “progress may stall.”

"To the extent that this reversal has been complete, further significant improvements in the unemployment rate will likely require a more rapid expansion of production and demand from consumers and businesses, a process that can be supported by continued accommodative policies," Bernanke told a gathering of the National Association for Business Economics.

Mr. Bernanke has made several public appearances recently, including giving a series of lectures to college students which is one strategy to clean the institution's public image, battered in the wake of the financial crisis.

Bernanke emphasized that much of the advancement in the U.S. labor market since the summer of 2009, when the economy began recovery from the country’s deepest recession, was due to a decline in layoffs rather than employing a number of job seekers.

"To achieve a more rapid recovery in the job market, hiring rates will need to return to more normal levels," he said.

Posted by James Fried on Tuesday March 27 2012, 10:31 AM EDT. Ref: CNN. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Finance. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0