Obama aide Axelrod likely to leave in 2011

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senior White House aide David Axelrod is likely to leave his job next year to work on President Barack Obama's re-election campaign.

"I've been pretty clear to anybody who has ever talked to me about this that at some point, I'm going to go back and start working on the re-election campaign," Axelrod told Reuters on Thursday.

"The president and I have always had an understanding about that. Nothing has changed," he said.

Axelrod, a close confidant of Obama, had long suggested he would leave at some point after the November 2 congressional elections to help run Obama's 2012 re-election bid.

He is expected to stay on through the first few months of 2011, providing some continuity within the White House, which has seen staff turnover already and will see further changes in coming months.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is thinking of stepping down soon to run for mayor of Chicago. Senior economic adviser Larry Summers is leaving at the end of this year. White House budget director Peter Orszag and Council of Economic Advisers Chairwoman Christina Romer have already moved on.

(Reporting by Caren Bohan and Jeff Mason; Editing by Xavier Briand)