U.S. employment barely budged last month, an economic problem for the 8.2 million people out of work and a political predicament for a president who doesn't want to end up in the same situation.
About 21,000 jobs were created in February, the Labor Department said yesterday, a sixth the size of economists' forecasts. The unemployment rate remained at 5.6 percent as 392,000 people dropped out of the labor force, just as the presidential campaign kicked into high gear.
The Labor Department, which originally estimated an increase of 112,000 jobs in January, also revised that number downward, to 97,000.
Its disappointing report came on the heels of an Associated Press poll showing President Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry running neck and neck. Fifty-three percent of those polled said they "disapprove" of the way Bush is handling the economy.
The U.S. economy has regained momentum since the 2001 recession, from the stock market to the gross domestic product, but employment is down by 2.3 million jobs since Bush took office. Gains made during each of the past six months were significantly below the level that economists say is needed just to keep up with population growth.
"The great American job machine is still sputtering," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com in West Chester, Pa. "The job market's better than it was six months ago, but barely, and it's certainly not improving as quickly as expected. ... We need to see much better [numbers] soon or the economic expansion will measurably weaken."
Investors' reaction was muted. The Nasdaq composite index dropped 7.48 points, but the Dow Jones industrial average gained 7.55 points and the Standard & Poor's 500 index inched up 1.99 points.
The president's camp immediately put the jobs data to work for its cause, prodding Kerry's "20-year record of supporting higher taxes."
"Our nation's economic recovery should not be derailed by bad policies like over regulation, over taxation and over litigation," Terry Holt, Bush's campaign spokesman, said in a statement yesterday. "President Bush has provided steady leadership that has put us on the road to economic recovery."
Kerry, who said the president has "overpromised and underdelivered," shot back with a statement of his own: "At this rate, we won't dig ourselves out of the jobs hole George Bush has gotten us into for almost a decade."
