Obama says must do more to ease US unemployment

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President Barack Obama said on Monday his top priority was to tackle high US unemployment, and stressed that although the economy was growing again, many Americans were still suffering.

"Our economy is growing again for the first time in more than a year," Obama told reporters after a meeting with his cabinet. "We cannot be sit back and be satisfied given the extraordinarily high unemployment levels that we have seen."

US unemployment is at a 26-year high of 10.2 percent and may get worse before it improves, despite the economy's swing into positive growth in the third quarter of this year.

Obama, whose once-lofty public approval ratings have been hurt by the economy and high jobless numbers since he took office in January, has convened a jobs forum on Dec 3 to review what other measures can be taken to boost employment creation.

However, he has also said that he is interested in solutions that would not cost much, acknowledging a record US deficit after government tax revenue was hit by the country's steep recession.

Noting that many US businesses were now making good profits, Obama said this reflected cost-cutting rather than an improvement in wider demand in the economy, generating surging US productivity which has not yet led to hiring.

"We don't want to wait. We want to see if we can accelerate it," Obama said, referring to potential measures to encourage firms to expand their payrolls.