White House says job losses show need for stimulus

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Friday the latest severe job losses reinforced the need for Congress to pass an economic stimulus package and warned that failure to act could lead to a double-digit unemployment rate.

"These numbers, and the very real suffering of American workers they represent, reinforce the need for bold fiscal action," Christina Romer, head of President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement.

"If we fail to act, we are likely to lose millions more jobs and the unemployment rate could reach double digits," she said after a Labour Department report that U.S. employers slashed 598,000 jobs in January, the deepest cut in payrolls in 34 years and the jobless rate shot up to 7.6 percent.