The Congressional Budget Office is predicting sluggish growth for the U.S. economy over the next year. Speaking before the congressional “super committee” on the deficit, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf said the official unemployment rate will remain above nine percent through next year’s elections.

Douglas Elmendorf: “Incoming data and other developments since early July suggest that the economic recovery will continue but at a weaker pace than we had anticipated. With output growing at only a modest rate, CBO expects employment to expand very slowly, leaving the unemployment rate, as depicted by the dots in the figure, close to nine percent through the end of next year.”