Under pressure to spur job growth, President Obama announced on Monday he had chosen Princeton University labor economist Alan Krueger to become the top White House economist and that he will offer a jobs plan next week. Krueger, an expert on unemployment, would succeed Austan Goolsbee as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

President Barack Obama: “Alan brings a wealth of experience to the job. He’s one of the nation’s leading economists. For more than two decades, he has studied and developed economic policy both inside and outside of government. In the first two years of this administration, as we were dealing with the effects of a complex and fast-moving financial crisis, a crisis that threatened a second Great Depression, Alan’s counsel as chief economist at the Treasury Department proved invaluable.”