Washington - US President Barack Obama put the spotlight back on his domestic agenda Thursday after an eight-day trip to Europe and the Middle East, touting his housing and health care plans.

Obama held a roundtable in the morning highlighting the low mortgage rates available for potential homeowners, hoping to kickstart a housing market that has been at the centre of the US economic downturn.

The US economy continued to struggle during Obama's first trip overseas as president. Unemployment surged to 8.5 per cent in March, its highest level in 25 years.

Obama said struggling homeowners had begun to take advantage of the government's efforts to help them keep their properties. Applications to refinance mortgages have jumped 88 per cent since the administration announced a plan to help homeowners in February, Obama said.

Tumbling housing prices and more than 3 million foreclosures in 2008 brought the US financial sector to the brink of collapse, sparking a wider economic crisis that has plunged the world into its first recession since World War II.

Obama later Thursday pushed for better health care and treatment of the country's military veterans.

The president arrived back in Washington early Wednesday morning, but took a rare day off from the public eye.