Obama says unemployment rate in U.S. will continue to rise

WASHINGTON, July 14 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that the country's unemployment rate will continue to rise for several months due to the worst economic recession in decades.

"This has been a more severe recession than we've seen since the Great Depression," Obama said after meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, noting that the unemployment rate would continue to tick up for several months.

"The challenge for this administration is to make sure that even as we are stabilizing the financial system, we understand that the most important thing in the economy is, are people able to find good jobs that pay good wages," he said.

But he also stressed that the situation in the financial markets has been improved.

"We have looked at a lot of the economic data that's coming outright now," said Obama. "And, as I've said repeatedly, we have seen some stabilization in the financial markets."

The pace of job losses in the United States quickened in June to 467,000, driving the jobless rate to 9.5 percent, the highest in more than 26 years.

Since the recession began in December 2007, the U.S economy has lost a net total of 6.5 million jobs.