Obama economic adviser expects jobless rate to stay high

So why has Obama kept promising to quickly lower unemployment?

President Obama's chief economic adviser warned Sunday that the nation's dismal unemployment numbers aren't likely to improve anytime soon.

Austan Goolsbee, appointed last week as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, told "Fox News Sunday' that the nearly two-year-old recession has "put us very deep in the whole."

'It's going to be a long battle to get out of that," he said. "I don't think the unemployment rate will be coming down significantly in the near future."

The nation's jobless rate is currently at 9.6 percent. When pressed, Goolsbee declined to say what that figure may be by year's end--but he did admit he doesn't expect it to decrease. "I don't want to get into specific forecasting," Goolsbee said. "It's clear the labor market is significantly weakened and has been for some time. We have to do everything we can to try to create jobs."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100912/pl_yblog_upshot/obama-economic-adviser-expects-jobless-rate-to-stay-high

Of course, this explains why Obama's new strategy is "change the subject / class warfare / tax the rich".