Obama: 'We’ve got a long way to go’ on road to economic recovery

President Barack Obama warned Monday he anticipates more job losses despite signs of an economic recovery.

“We've got a long way to go,” Obama said in remarks that opened his second quarterly meeting with the Presidential Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB).

The Obama administration is bracing for a report Friday on the latest unemployment numbers. The rate is expected to rise from 9.8 to 9.9 percent, though some analysts expect the economy lost fewer jobs in October than in the previous month. If the report is worse than expected, the jobless rate could jump to 10 percent, a mark most believe is now inevitable.

The unemployment report comes one week after a bit of positive news on the economy. The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the economy grew by 3.5 percent in the third quarter, suggesting the worst recession since the Great Depression is over.

Obama credited the $787 billion stimulus package for the economic growth, stating on Monday that it had “pulled the economy back from the brink.”

He said his administration is “pleased that the actions that we took swiftly through the recovery act helped to stem what could have been a disastrous situation for the economy and we are starting to see stabilization and, indeed, some improvement.”

Obama and his economic advisory team discussed how to grow exports, build infrastructure and increase the number of green jobs in the U.S. as ways to stunt unemployment claims and put people back to work.

“Now, we all know that in every economic recovery there is going to be a lag between the economy growing again, businesses investing again and businesses hiring again,” Obama said.

“But given the severity of the job losses that took place at the beginning of the year and the need for us to make up a whole lot of job loss, [it] is going to require, I think, some ... innovative action on our part and on Congress’s part and on the private sector’s part.”

Obama said that increasing job growth is the “overriding focus” of his administration.

“Having brought the economy back from the brink, the question is, how are we going to make sure that people are getting back to work and able to support their families?” Obama said. “It's not going to happen overnight, but we will not rest until we are succeeding in generating the jobs that this economy needs.”

The Economic Recovery Advisory Board consists of Obama’s chief economic team and White House advisers including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, as well as outside advisers from business and labor.