President Barack Obama will outline new measures next week to boost the U.S. economy after August data on Friday showed again that jobs -- the central issue in November elections -- were being created too slowly.

Obama, speaking to reporters in the White House Rose Garden, greeted a better-than-expected August employment report that showed thousands of new private sector jobs were created as positive news.

But he said the numbers were not good enough and more needed to be done to address U.S. economic woes.

The White House is under pressure to show tangible results in lifting growth and hiring before congressional elections in November, when Obama's Democrats face punishment from voters anxious about near double-digit unemployment.

I will be addressing a broader package of ideas next week, Obama said. We are confident that we are moving in the right direction. But we want to keep this recovery moving stronger and accelerate the job growth that is needed so desperately all across the country.

On Monday, the president highlighted a number of possible options including extending middle class tax cuts, investing in clean energy, spending more on infrastructure, and delivering more tax cuts to businesses to encourage hiring.

The White House declined to give more specifics about the measures and a spokeswoman said final decisions had not been made.

We need to take further steps to create jobs and keep the economy growing, including extending tax cuts for the middle class and investing in the areas of our economy where the potential for job growth is greatest, Obama said.

In the weeks ahead, I'll be discussing some of these ideas in more detail.

Obama will have ample opportunity to flesh out those thoughts next week. He is planning to travel to Milwaukee on Monday, the Labor Day holiday, and will visit Cleveland on Wednesday. He will also hold a White House news conference on Friday, September 10.

The August employment report earlier showed a bigger-than- expected rise of 67,000 in private payrolls, while unemployment inched up a tenth of a percentage point to 9.6 percent.

Overall, U.S. nonfarm payrolls fell 54,000 as temporary jobs to conduct the decennial census dropped by 114,000.

Jobs are being created. They're just not being created as fast as they need to, given the big hole that we experienced, Obama said.

We're going to have to continue to work with Republicans and Democrats to come up with ideas that can further accelerate that job growth. I'm confident that we can do that.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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