(Newsmax).President Barack Obama conceded Tuesday that the unemployment rate will keep growing for "several months" as he prepared to head to battered Michigan to unveil a plan to help train people for the next generation of jobs.
Obama is proposing a multibillion-dollar investment in the nation's community colleges, a $12 billion effort to help the two-year institutions reach, teach and train more people for "the jobs of the future." He was to outline his program in a speech Tuesday afternoon at Macomb Community College in Warren, Mich.
Before leaving town, Obama was pressed on how high the unemployment rate might climb. In Michigan, the jobless rate is 14.1 percent, worst in the nation.
"How employment numbers are going to respond is not yet clear," Obama said after a meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.
"My expectation is, is that we will probably continue to see unemployment tick up for several months," Obama said. "And the challenge for this administration is to make sure that even as we are stabilizing the financial system ... are people able to find good jobs that pay good wages?"
More than 2 million jobs have been lost since Congress passed Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package. Without that government intervention, Obama said, states like Michigan would be in even worse shape because they would have had to lay off more teachers, firefighters and other workers.
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