President Obama’s forthcoming budget resolution will project an average unemployment rate of 8.9 percent in 2012, Reuters reports. However, administration officials were quick to disavow the figure:
President Barack Obama will forecast a U.S. unemployment rate averaging 8.9 percent in 2012 in his annual budget on Monday -- but before the document was even released a top aide called the projection "stale" and said it should be lower.
"We would certainly lower our forecast of the unemployment rate from the figures that will appear in Monday's Budget if we were to do another forecast today," top White House economist Alan Krueger said in an e-mail.
"The forecast of the unemployment rate that will accompany the Budget should be considered stale and out of date," wrote Krueger, who is chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors.
The "stale" figure comes despite a budget that is already a week late.