WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says he isn't celebrating a business group's assertion that the recession officially ended in June 2009.

Appearing at a town-hall meeting sponsored by CNBC, Obama today said times are still very hard for people "who are struggling," including those who are out of work and many others who are having difficulty paying their bills.

The National Bureau of Economic Research, a panel of academic economists based in Cambridge, Mass., says the recession lasted 18 months, starting in December 2007 and ending in June 2009. Previously the longest postwar downturns were those in 1973-1975 and in 1981-1982. Both of those lasted 16 months.

The president said today that it's going "to take more time to solve" an economic problem that was years in the making.