WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama this morning tapped labor economist Alan Krueger for a top administration post, rounding out his White House economic team ahead of a highly-anticipated announcement next week on a new jobs initiative.

Obama announced Krueger's nomination to chair the White House Council of Economic Advisers in a Rose Garden ceremony. Krueger is a former Treasury Department official and Princeton economist.

In Krueger, Obama will gain an economist with expertise in unemployment and the labor market. If confirmed by the Senate, Krueger would replace previous CEA chair Austan Goolsbee, who left the administration earlier this month to return to the University of Chicago.

Goolsbee was the latest in a string of top White House economists to leave over the past year, forcing Obama to do a wholesale makeover of the economic team that came to the White House with him three years ago.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is the only remaining top official left from Obama's original economics team.

Krueger spent the first two years of the Obama administration as an assistant Treasury secretary for economic policy.

In 2010, he returned to Princeton University, where he has served on the faculty for more than 20 years.