WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama warned on Saturday it would take "many more months" for the United States to get out of recession even after GDP figures showed the economy shrank only modestly in the second quarter.

Obama, who has defended his young administration's economic policies in recent weeks in the face of worsening unemployment numbers, said jobless figures next week would still show that too many Americans were losing work.

"It will take many more months to fully dig ourselves out of a recession - a recession that we've now learned was even deeper than anyone thought," the president said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

"And when we receive our monthly job report next week, it is likely to show that we are continuing to lose far too many jobs in this country. As far as I'm concerned, we will not have a recovery as long as we keep losing jobs," he said.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason)