Bennett is defending jobless rate

WASHINGTON — New Labor Department data show the nation's unemployment rate continued unchanged last month at 5.6 percent as the U.S. economy added a barely noticeable 21,000 new jobs in February — far short of the 125,000 jobs economists had been forecasting.

In Washington, D.C., congressional Democrats see that as a glass half empty, while Republicans say it is half full.

Leading the election-year defense of that news for Republicans and President Bush was Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, chairman of Congress' Joint Economic Committee.

"We've now had six months of growth in employment," Bennett said as his panel received the monthly employment figures. "Other indicators show the overall economy continues its strong growth."

But Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the ranking Senate Democrat on the committee, said, "This is a very disappointing report. . . . More than 8 million Americans remain unemployed — with nearly 2 million out of work for six months or more."

Bennett and Reed jousted about whether figures should be interpreted with gloom or optimism at the committee hearing, while Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Kathleen Utgoff answered questions giving some support to the competing views.

Bennett said that while the 5.6 percent unemployment rate is the same as last month, that "is still well below its recent peak of 6.3 percent last June and remains below the average of each of the decades of the 1970s, '80s and '90s."

Reed, however, said, "A year ago, the administration estimated that nearly 2 million jobs would be added in the second half of 2003 — 510,000 of them due to the president's tax cuts. In fact, only 124,000 jobs were created during that period. We got the tax cuts but didn't get the jobs."

Utgoff conceded in response to a question from Reed that, "In the job market, it is a weak recovery" from the recent recession.

Bennett, however, said more jobs may have been created than the most-often-used study indicates. It surveys key large employers about how many workers they employ each month. That has been much lower recently than a separate survey asking heads of household how many people in their families have jobs.

The "household" survey shows 983,000 jobs were created during the past 12 months, or nearly nine times the 122,000 jobs that the "employer" survey says were created during the period. Bennett has said the difference may be that more people are now self-employed or working for small firms — jobs the other survey would miss.