Job slump puts Bush in bad light

The job market slumped back into stagnation last month with the unemployment rate stuck at 5.6 percent and only 21,000 jobs created, a development that spells trouble for President Bush’s re-election effort.

Modest gains in temporary services, health care and government were mostly offset by drops in construction and manufacturing jobs, the Labor Department reported yesterday.

Wage gains for all workers slipped to the lowest since 1987, with the past year’s 1.6 percent growth in average hourly earnings barely outpacing the rate of inflation.

Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, leveled the blame for the flagging job market on Mr. Bush. The president sought to jump-start a job recovery with $350 billion in tax cuts last year but the response has been only weak and dwindling job gains.

Americans “can either suffer with more and more job losses that rip the heart out of our economy, or they can give George Bush a new job in November and start putting America back to work,” the Massachusetts Democrat said.

The president did not respond personally to Mr. Kerry’s attack, but several of his top lieutenants sought to cast the numbers in a positive light.

“The unemployment rate of 5.6 percent continues to be below the averages of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s,” said Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao, but “as the president has said many times, we’re not going to rest until every American who wants a job can find one.”

A Republican Party campaign consultant conceded that the weak job growth after more than two years of economic recovery and 2.2 million job losses is hurting Mr. Bush.

“Is the Bush campaign suicidal over the jobs-formation news? Well, maybe not exactly suicidal, but I can tell you I’m very unhappy — depressed — with the news, and I normally reflect the views of the campaign,” said the consultant, who did not want to be named.

“This is really bad news” both for the president as well as millions of job-hunters because “it means the president’s program is failing,” said Peter Morici, business professor at the University of Maryland.

While the tax cuts boosted economic growth to a steamy 8.2 percent rate last summer, they have produced fewer than 100,000 jobs a month since September and now are close to fizzling out.

A second round of tax refunds to be mailed out early this year had been expected to generate another uptick in growth and jobs, but neither has materialized.

With budget deficits now soaring toward $500 billion, Mr. Morici said, the administration and Congress — as well as the Federal Reserve — have few levers left to stimulate the ailing economy.

Mr. Kerry and Democratic leaders see public discontent with the job market as their best argument for change and turning the election into a referendum on Mr. Bush’s handling of the economy.

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