President Obama made some comments today about the economy and the dire situation many people are in after a high level cabinet meeting today.  He acknowledged that while the business sector has increased its profits it was largely due to cost cutting measures making the search for jobs even more difficult for the over 10% of the country looking for work.

He also made reference to his recent trip to Asia when he said he was working to open up markets for American goods into that saying, "  if we could just increase our exports by 5% into that region that would mean hundreds of thousands of well paying jobs."  Unfortunately, for various reasons the deal is not there yet, but they are working on it.

Watch a portion of the President's comments here, or scroll down for the transcript:



Our Economy is growing again for the first time in more than a year and we know that economic growth is a prerequisite for job growth.  But, having said that, what I emphasize today is that we cannot sit back and be satisfied given the extraordinarily high unemployment levels that we've seen.  We have only taken the first step in curing our economy and making sure that it is moving on the right track and I will not rest until businesses are investing again and businesses are hiring again and people have work again.  Now, this is going to be a challenging task, it's challenging because of the extraordinary blow that the financial crisis delivered to the economy as a whole.  It is particularly difficult because both the financial sector and the housing sector were the biggest drivers of economic growth prior to the financial crisis, so the severity of their pull back means that things are moving slower than we would like them to move.  One of the ironies that we have right now is that businesses across sectors are making profits again, but their primary way of making profit is to cut cost as opposed to seeing increased demand and unfortunately the huge rise in productivity which is normally a good thing, in this circumstance means they have learned to produce the same amount of goods with fewer people.

All these present some significant challenges in terms of us creating more jobs in this economy, but having said that, something our economic team has emphasized, that there are core strengths to the American economy that will put us in good stead over the long term.  Having gone through this very wrenching adjustment we continue to have the best universities in the world, the best innovation and technologies in the world, we continue to have some of the best workers in the world, the most productive workers in the world and we have the kind of dynamism and entrepreneurship in our economy that is going to serve us well in the long term.  The key is to bridge where we are now to that more prosperous future and so a lot of the discussion in a whole range of different sectors is how do we move that job agenda forward?

For example, in the export area I just came back from a trip to Asia in which one of my highest priorities was discussing how we could increase exports into that region.  If we could just increase our exports by 5% into that region that would mean hundreds of thousands of well paying jobs and there's no reason we can't do it, in fact it turns out that they want our products and they want our technology, but partly because of regulatory restrictions, partly because of currency issues, partly because we just haven't been as aggressive as we need to be, we haven't gotten there.  That's something we're going to be focusing on. 

Infrastructure.  Although some of the payout extends beyond just a couple of years, us investing now in revamping our existing infrastructure and then starting to lay the foundation for things like high speed rail can make all the difference in the world.  And in green technology we are seeing some terrific ideas that could immediately put people back to work  and save consumers money and help with the climate crisis that we have in place.  So, as many of you know we are going to be having a Jump Jobs Summit on December 3rd.  Part of the task of this cabinet was to generate good ideas in anticipation of that Jobs Summit.  We are going to be bringing together people from all across the country, business, labour, academics, not-for-profits, entrepreneurs, small and large businesses to explore how we can jump start the hiring that typically lags behind economic growth, but we don't want to wait, we want to see if we can accelerate it and I'm confident that we'll be able to do it because I've got as good of a cabinet as any President has ever had.

Let me just close by saying this.  This is a week to give thanks and I advise this hard working cabinet to get a little bit of rest this week, particularly people who have been travelling around the globe day in and day out and don't know what time zone they're in.  But, I think it's also time to remember that this has been a very difficult year and a lot of people out there are having a very, very tough time and I indicated to my cabinet that as hard as they are working and as difficult as the political environment can be sometimes, we are extraordinarily blessed to be in a position where we can make a potential difference in the lives of millions of people, we need to take advantage of that opportunity and redouble our efforts in the months and years to come.

Thank you very much everybody.