Washington - US companies announced thousands of new job cuts on Monday as the world's largest economy continues to battle through a serious recession, prompting another urgent call to action by President Barack Obama.

Caterpillar Inc, Sprint Nextel Corp and Home Depot Inc led more than 70,000 job cuts announced on the day across a broad section of the US economy. Pfizer Inc said it would slash 19,000 jobs as part of a merger with rival Wyeth.

Microsoft Corp, Intel Corp and United Airlines' parent company UAL Corp all shuttered plants and slashed jobs last week.

On the positive side, a key gauge of the US economy unexpectedly rose in December, the Conference Board said Monday, attributing the increase to massive injections of cash into the financial system by the Federal Reserve.

The housing market at the heart of the US economic downturn also received a slight boost: Existing home sales unexpectedly rose 6.5 per cent in November, due to a record drop in prices of 15 per cent from a year earlier, the National Association of Retailers said.

US stock indices were up more than 1 per cent Monday morning.

Obama said the most recent job cuts should instill Congress with a "sense of urgency" as they consider a 825-billion-dollar economic stimulus package, which has run into opposition from Republican legislators seeking more tax cuts and less government spending.

"We can't afford distractions and we cannot afford delays," said Obama, who will meet with Republican legislators Tuesday in a bid to convince them of the package's merits. The House of Representatives could vote on the massive stimulus as early as Wednesday.

The private New York-based Conference Board's index of Leading Economic Indicators climbed 0.3 per cent in the final month of 2008, the result of a surge in the real money supply that masked further drops in the battered US housing sector and more than 500,000 job losses in the month.

The US central bank has loaned hundreds of billions of dollars to struggling banks in an effort to keep the country's financial sector afloat.

It marked the index's first gain in 6 months and followed a 0.4- per-cent drop in November. The index has plummeted 2.5 per cent in the second half of 2008 and has fallen about 5 per cent from its peak in July 2007.

The Conference Board evaluates 10 key areas of the economy and gauges activity over the coming 3 to 6 months. Only four of the 10 indicators increased in December.