Romer: Hard To Know If 2009 Recovery a Given

One of President Barack Obama's top advisors said Thursday she saw glimmers of hope that the economy was stabilizing, but it was still "hard to know" if a recovery would get under way this year as expected.

CNBC.com Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romer

"We expect the economy to level out in the second half of the year and then begin to recover," Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in prepared remarks.

"Whether the recovery begins later this year, as most private forecasters predict, or takes a bit longer is hard to know," she said in testimony prepared for delivery to the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress.

The U.S. economy contracted at a faster-than-expected 6.1 percent annualized paced in the first quarter of 2009 as the worst recession in a generation hit jobs and spending.

The downturn has already cost more than 5 million jobs since it began in late 2007 and Romer said that unemployment would continue to rise in the months ahead.

But it was not all bad news, she said.

"Already, we are beginning to see 'glimmers of hope' that the economy is stabilizing. The housing sector has shown some tentative signs of finding a bottom," she said.

"We currently expect the pace of the overall decline in the economy to moderate sharply over the next several months. This is consistent with the Blue Chip consensus forecast, which shows a rate of decline in GDP of 2.1 percent in the second quarter," Romer said.

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