A University of Central Florida economist says President Obama’s Thursday summit with top business leaders is a little too late to offer any sweeping solutions that would plug the nation’s job losses.
“With an expanding commitment to Afghanistan and record-setting budget deficits already in place, workable policy options are limited,” said Sean Snaith, the director of UCF’s Institute for Economic Competitiveness. “Thursday’s job summit is apt to be more of a support group than a solution to double-digit unemployment and shrinking payrolls.”
Obama will have to walk a fine line between finding ways to get nearly 16 million Americans back to work without substantially adding to the nation’s $1.4 trillion budget deficit, Snaith said.
“Unfortunately, the nation is in a real fiscal bind now with very few ways out,” he added.
In his latest quarterly U.S. forecast, released this morning, Snaith says that unemployment rates won’t peak until next year and expects the White House to juggle three straight years of trillion-dollar debt through 2011.
To read Snaith’s full forecast, click here.
UCF’s Sean Snaith is a national expert in economics, forecasting, market sizing and economic analysis who authors quarterly reports about the state of the economy. Bloomberg News recently named Snaith as one of the country’s most accurate forecasters for his predictions about the Federal Reserve’s benchmark interest rate, the Federal Funds rate.