"Any economist will tell you that even if we move rapidly, it takes a little while for this to move through the system and to put the brakes on what is the most serious economic downturn we've had in many, many generations," White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod said Sunday.
U.S. unemployment surged to a 16-year high of 7.2 percent as a deepening recession pushed employers to shed a massive 524,000 jobs in December, capping a yearly loss of 2.6 million, Raw Story reported January 9th.
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Axelrod, a former Chicago Tribune reporter, told Stephanopoulos that "we're trying to avoid...double-digit unemployment. We're trying to take some measures that will create 3 million to 4 million jobs the next couple of years, to put -- to try and slow down this plummeting employment."
The Obama administration, he said, would like to "invest" money to strengthen the economy and expand service programs such as Americorps.
But he said an economic turnaround would probably not happen this year. "I think it's fair to say that it's going to take not months, but years to turn this around," Axelrod said.
This video is from ABC's This Week, broadcast Jan. 18, 2009. A full transcript of the interview can be found here.
