The US on Friday posted disappointingly weak jobs growth for September, adding firepower to a pre-election Democratic assault on President George W. Bush's record.
Employers hired 96,000 extra people in September, short of the 150,000 broadly expected by eco-nomists, the Labor Department said in the last major jobs report ahead of the Nov. 2 vote.
The unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.4 percent.
The news was a potential blow to Bush, who has presided over the shedding of 821,000 jobs during a term that included the massive shock of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Economists widely believe he must create at least 150,000 jobs a month just to keep pace with population. Some 2.6 million positions were lost in the first 32 months of Bush's term, but 1.8 million created since August last year.
Senator John Kerry, who was to debate Bush on national television later in the day, attacked the US leader for presiding over the loss of 1.63 million private sector jobs. He did not mention that the government had meanwhile hired 813,000.
"Today, we received another disappointing jobs report for America's workers," Kerry said in a statement. "President Bush will be the first president in 72 years to face the electorate with an economy that has lost jobs under his watch."
The Bush administration took comfort from a Labor Department estimate that it may revise up the number of jobs created in the year to March 2004 by 236,000.
Such a revision, if confirmed, would trim job losses during Bush's presidency to 585,000.
"The steady increase in jobs, which we've seen now for 13 consecutive months, continued in September," Treasury Secretary John Snow boasted in a statement.
"While we're encouraged with today's report, we're not satisfied," the economic policy chief said.
Last month alone, three hurricanes struck the US: Frances, Ivan and Jeanne.
"At the national level, the severe weather appears to have held down employment growth but not enough to change materially the bureau's assessment of the employment situation in September," the Labor Department said.
A breakdown showed goods-producing industries lost 13,000 jobs, including a loss of 18,000 factory jobs but a gain of 4,000 in building, while services industries churned out 109,000 extra jobs, including a gain of 37,000 jobs in government, 34,000 in professional and business services, 13,000 in leisure and hospitality and 8,000 in education and health. Retailers cut 15,000.
BMO Financial Group analyst Sal Guatieri said the employment report reflected a slowdown in US jobs growth over the past three months.
"It would be nice to see stronger jobs growth which would then boost consumer confidence and remove an element of the risk to the economic expansion," Guatieri said.
Employment growth was likely curtailed by improved productivity -- or output per hour -- rather than weaker economic growth, an encouraging trend for corporate profits and people's incomes, he said.
Energy prices also hurt, said Wells Fargo Bank chief economist Sung Won Sohn.
"Business are still extremely cautious about hiring. There are too many uncertainties in the economy right now, from surging prices of oil, possible terrorism around the election time, [to] what could happen in Iraq," Sohn said.
RSS