US President Barack Obama has urged businesses to 'step up' and hire workers, pressing banks and other corporations to do more to help an economy that he said would take 'several years' to recover fully.
In a town-hall style meeting conducted by CBS News, Obama said the weak housing market and high petrol prices were the biggest 'headwinds' dragging on the economy.
'We've got a lot more work to do to get businesses to invest and to hire,' he told the audience in remarks broadcast today.
'It's going to take us several years for us to get back where we need to be,' he warned.
The US President said businesses and banks that reaped the rewards of extraordinary measures to pull the country out of a deep recession had a responsibility now to invest hordes of cash into US jobs.
'It is time for companies to step up,' Obama said. 'American taxpayers contributed to that process of stabilising the economy. Companies have benefited from that, and they're making a lot of money, and now's the time for them to start betting on American workers and American products,' he added.
US companies created jobs at the fastest pace in five years in April, according to recent Labor Department datea, pointing to underlying strength in the economy even as the jobless rate hit 9%.
Obama said his administration was looking at ways to extend programmes to help people struggling with mortgage payments on houses that had lost much of their value.
'We're going to continue to work with Congress to see if we can propose more legislation to encourage longer loan modifications,' he said. 'We are trying to expand the loan modification program to reach more people,' he said.
Obama said the White House studied oil price movements every day and some increase in fuel prices was inevitable because the economy had improved, boosting demand for energy.
'When the economy started growing again, worldwide demand for oil went back up,' he said, noting that disruptions in the Middle East, especially Libya, had affected oil prices.
But he said his administration hoped to see petrol prices down significantly by the summer and was working to crack down on speculation and price gouging.
'As oil prices on the world markets go down, we want to make sure that's reflected in the pump,' he said.
Obama stressed that his administration's work to improve the economy had paid dividends, saying the manufacturing sector was especially strong in part because of his decision to rescue the car industry.
In response to concerns from small businesses about needless regulation, Obama indicated his administration would announce changes in the coming weeks in regulations to ease the burden of excessive paperwork.
US retail sales growth weakened in April
Higher oil and food prices took a greater chunk from Americans' pocketbooks in April as the growth of overall US consumer spending slowed in the month, data showed today.
Retail and food service sales rose 0.5% in April from March, and were up 7.6% from a year earlier, according to figures released by the Census Department.
It was the weakest rate of growth since December, underscoring the sluggishness of the overall economy in the first four months of the year and the impact of higher fuel and food prices. Spending on petrol rose 2.7% in April, and on groceries, 1.5%.
Meanwhile, Americans cut back shopping for electronics, sporting and hobby goods, and home furnishings. The impact of higher petrol prices was even clearer in the data measuring the February-April period.
Consumers spent 8.9% more on fuel for their cars and trucks over the previous quarter, and 18.3% more than the year-earlier quarter. Overall spending growth for the same periods was up 2.7% and 8.1%, respectively.
