The following is a rush transcript of the September 12, 2010, edition of "Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace." This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

CHRIS WALLACE, ANCHOR: The political battle lines are now drawn over what should be done to shore up the nation's economy. We'll talk with former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich in a few minutes, but we begin with the first interview of the new chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, Austan Goolsbee.

And, Mr. Goolsbee, congratulations on your new job, and welcome back to "Fox News Sunday."

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE, CHAIRMAN OF THE PRESIDENT'S COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS: Thank you very much for having me, Chris.

WALLACE: Your council is exactly what it says, the economic advisers to the president. What is your latest forecast of the unemployment rate at the end of this year?

GOOLSBEE: Well, the -- there is a forecast in the economic report of the president.

WALLACE: Which is a 10 percent average for the entire year.

GOOLSBEE: Yes. And there will be a further update through the -- what's called the Troika process, but the OMB, Treasury and the CEA together come up with a forecast that we update periodically.

But I think it's fair to say that after this recession that began in 2007 put us very deep in the hole, it's going to be a long battle to get out of that deep of a recession. So we've had positive private sector job growth for eight months.

WALLACE: Well, I'm going to -- I'm going to get to that.

GOOLSBEE: But I don't think the unemployment rate will be coming down significantly anytime in the near future.

WALLACE: Do you think it will -- you'll be -- it's now 9.6 percent. End of this year?

GOOLSBEE: I don't -- look, I try to stay out of the specific forecasting games other than our official forecast. I think it's clear that the labor market is significantly weakened, has been for some time. We have to do everything we can to try to create jobs and get people back to work.

WALLACE: Could it be 10 percent by the end of the year?

GOOLSBEE: Look, as I say, I'm not going to speculate. We have official forecasts and we'll release them when they come out.

WALLACE: But you don't expect...

GOOLSBEE: We need to do everything...

WALLACE: ... it to go down appreciably from...

GOOLSBEE: I don't expect it to go down appreciably. That's what -- our forecast, and most of the private forecasts say the same thing.

WALLACE: Your report predicted that the economy, or GDP, would be 3 percent growth this year. But in the second quarter it already dropped to 1.6 percent. What is your forecast now for the second half of this year?

GOOLSBEE: Well, as I say, the forecasts comes out -- there are official forecasts and they come out on a -- on a periodic basis. And we will make those updates at each time.

WALLACE: But you must be...

GOOLSBEE: I think the...

WALLACE: ... briefing the president...

GOOLSBEE: ... blue chip...

WALLACE: ... all the time...

GOOLSBEE: Yeah, we brief him, and I think the best thing to do is if you look at the blue chip average of all the leading private forecasters, you see that they still expect positive growth.

It has come down a bit in their expectation, because we had a significant headwind that came from the crisis in Europe at the end of the spring and into the summer...

WALLACE: But it's now...

GOOLSBEE: ... and that's cutting into growth.

WALLACE: ... 1.6 percent. Do you think it's going to stay there, go up, or go down?

GOOLSBEE: As I say, I don't want to speculate off of what the official forecasts are. It is something that -- in positive growth that is not as fast as we would like it to be, and that's why we need to focus on to policies that are going to get the economy growing faster and get people back to work.

WALLACE: The president and vice president said this was going to be the summer of recovery. But let's take a look at the actual numbers. The economy lost 175,000 jobs in June, then 54,000 each of the last two months, for a total loss this summer of 283,000 jobs.

GOOLSBEE: Well...

WALLACE: Some recovery.

GOOLSBEE: ... I think that's unfair on two dimensions. First, the vice president was talking about the summer of recovery in reference to the Recovery Act, that you would see the creation of a series of infrastructure and other projects ramping up over the summer, and you did see that.

WALLACE: It didn't mean economic recovery?

GOOLSBEE: And second, in the numbers that you're citing there, there are big negatives from the people temporarily working on the census, which led to huge positive in the hundreds of thousands job additions earlier in the year followed by negatives as the census workers stopped taking the census.

If you look at private sector job growth, we've had eight straight months of private sector job growth. Now, it's not enough. We want it to be more. That was the sound of job creation right there. The -- we want it to be more. We want more projects. We need the private sector to stand up.