WASHINGTON, April 9 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama's top economic adviser said on Thursday that the sense of freefall in the economy will wane in coming months.

    "I think the sense of a ball falling off the table -- which is what the economy has felt like since the middle of last fall -- I think we can be reasonably confident that that's going to end within the next few months and you will no longer have that sense of free-fall," Lawrence Summers, director of President Barack Obama's National Economic Council, told the Economic Club of Washington.

    Meanwhile, he also warned that the unemployment rate may still rise. The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 8.5 percent in March, the highest level since late 1983.

    "Even if we got a return to positive growth, an economy that was growing at 1 percent would be an economy with rising unemployment," said Summers. "I don't think we can hold out the prospect we'll stabilize at the current level."