President Barack Obama says troubling jobless numbers for December show that the "road to recovery is never straight" but that the trend is pointing in the right direction.

Figures released Friday showed unemployment stubbornly stuck at 10 percent. At the same time, more people were giving up in the search for jobs.

Obama says job losses for the last quarter were one-tenth of the losses at the start of the year. He says, "Last month however we slipped back, losing more jobs than we gained."