U.S. 'close' to seeing job growth: White House

“We are, I believe, very close to the point where the job losses we have seen will give way to job growth,” Summers, director of President Barack Obama's National Economic Council, said Thursday at an IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates conference in Houston. Obama administration officials are trying to strengthen an economy that's lost 8.4 million jobs since December 2007.

Payrolls declined by 36,000 in February, a smaller drop than the 68,000 median loss forecast by economists surveyed by Bloomberg News before the March 5 report. The jobless rate held at 9.7 percent, higher than the average of 5.7 percent in the past two decades.

Better weather, hiring of temporary government workers and a growing economy are likely to expand payrolls by as much as 300,000 jobs in March, David Greenlaw, chief fixed-income economist at Morgan Stanley in New York, said in an interview with Bloomberg Radio this week.

Still, Summers said the recovery “is likely to be less rapid than in some past historical instances.”

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