Jobs picture boosts Bush poll hopes

US TREASURY Secretary John Snow has been basking in a stream of rosy economic data which, he says, will improve President Bush's chances of re-election in November.

Snow also implied that with current jobs growth the administration should 'break even' in job creation over the administration's term.

However, opinion polls have shown that a majority of Americans disapprove of Bush's management of the economy and think Democratic White House hopeful John Kerry would do a better job.

'I think there are some lags in these things and also there has been so much attention to other things, particularly the war in Iraq, that it has deflected attention from the economy,' Snow said when asked about recent negative public opinion polls for Bush.

'The news on the economy... is so good and so pervasive, so farreaching, that I think people will change their views here,' Snow said.

He instead sought to capitalise on official figures showing that 1.2m jobs have been created in the US so far this year - the best five months of job creation since 2000.

Snow said private-sector forecasts that the US will continue to generate between 200,000 and 300,000 jobs a month are 'reasonable'. If that is the case, all of the 2.6m jobs that were lost in the first 44 months of the Bush Presidency could be recovered by the time of the election in early November.

The figures also vindicate Snow's forecast in October last year that the economy would create jobs at a rate of 200,000 a month until the polls. Unemployment is seen as the crucial issue of the election.

Despite relatively robust economic growth of up to 4.5%, the rate of job creation has so far been below that of past economic recoveries.

Snow noted that nearly 1m jobs had been created in the last three months alone.

'I think we're going to see more of the same, continuing strong GDP growth and continuing strong job growth,' he added.

However, he refused to be drawn on a specific projection for job growth, saying only that the private estimates were in line with the assumptions of the Bush administration.

'It looks like we'll have growth for the coming quarters of over 4%,' he said.

Snow earlier said that a combination of President Bush's tax cuts and good management of monetary policy by the Federal Reserve meant that the economy was now 'hitting on all cylinders'.