U.S. President Barack Obama said on Sunday the U.S. economy has turned the corner and resumed growth.

"We are seeing the corner turn on the economy growing again," he said in a interview with CBS television news.

Obama said companies were beginning to hire again, but "it's not happening as fast as we'd like."

Signaling some improvement in the jobs market, the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent in January from 10 percent in December, the Labor Department reported Friday.

The U.S. economy grew at a rate of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 after advancing by 2.2 percent in the third quarter.