US President Barack Obama said today that this week's positive job and economic growth figures proved that his big spending efforts to stimulate the economy were working.
But he cautioned in his weekly radio address to Americans that "we have a long way to go before we return to prosperity" and more job losses were likely in coming days.
Democrats and Republicans agree the economy will be the top issue for the 2010 congressional elections, although the White House has disputed suggestions that they will be a judgment on Mr Obama and his policies.
Voting in next week's Virginia and New Jersey governors' races will render a first judgment on Mr Obama, who was sworn into office just over nine months ago in the midst of the worst recession since World War Two.
The US unemployment rate remains stubbornly high at 9.8 per cent, despite a $787 billion economic stimulus that Mr Obama and his fellow Democrats, who control Congress, pushed through in February. The unemployment rate is forecast to rise to 9.9 per cent for October.
But new data this week showing the US economy growing in the third quarter for the first time in more than a year, signaling the end of the worst recession in 70 years, was good news for the Obama administration.
"Now, economic growth is no substitute for job growth," Mr Obama stressed in his radio address. "But we will not create the jobs we need unless the economy is growing."
Mr Obama said steps taken by his administration to jump-start the economy, including the stimulus package of spending and tax cuts, had helped "blunt the worst of this recession."
Mr Obama said overall the stimulus had created or saved more than one million jobs.
"It took years to dig our way into the crisis we've faced. It will take more than a few months to dig our way out," he said.
Republicans, who favour tax cuts, say the stimulus has failed to halt rising joblessness and they also questioned the White House's figures on jobs saved or created.
"It's bewildering to see the same administration that sold its trillion-dollar spending plan this spring as a guarantee against 8 percent unemployment -- today it's nearly 10 percent -- claiming it created 1 million jobs, especially since it is a sad fact 3 million jobs have been lost since the stimulus was signed into law," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement..