Federal agencies, committees, and economists disagree about country's unemployment situation

The country's unemployment situation may not be as bad we think.

At least that's the word according to Republican-led Congressional Joint Economic Committee and the conservative Small Business Survival Committee, which have released reports suggesting that the figures most news organizations

Jobs, they said, could have actually grown by 1.4 million in the past two years.

It's a notion rejected by regional economists, two governmental agencies and at least one Democratic member of the joint committee. They have painted their opponents' position as a partisan donning of rose-colored glasses.

The discrepancy concerns two surveys conducted by the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The more widely-reported payroll survey, which uses data gleaned from business payrolls, has shown a loss of 1.1 million jobs since the end of the recession in the spring of 2001.

During that same time, however, the household survey - which polls a sampling of the population about their employment situation - has shown a gain of about 1.4 million jobs.

Recently, the JEC held a hearing regarding the two different numbers, with the committee's chairman, Sen. Robert Bennett, R- Utah, suggesting that the disparity may "illustrate a marked change in the makeup of the American workforce."

A spokeswoman for the committee echoed this statement, adding that "we're in a situation where the economy is changing - you have more people who are self-employed who may not be showing up on these payroll numbers."

But, according to Pearl Kamer, chief economist for the Long Island Association and professor of finance at Adelphi University, the household numbers simply aren't reliable.

"It's clear that we've been losing jobs, especially in the manufacturing sector," Kamer said. "I think the household numbers, and I've been monitoring them for about 40 years, have always proven to be unreliable. It's a smaller sample & you're working from self- reporting on the household side, versus actually payroll reports from the business side."

It's important to remember "that we're entering another presidential election cycle," she added.

A spokesman for Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-Manhattan, a member of the JEC, echoed these claims.

"If you're trying to paint a positive picture of the economy, the numbers that are actually endorsed by economists & aren't the ones that you'd want to look at," she said.

Additionally, the spokesman noted that both the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Republican-appointed Congressional Budget Office have said the payroll statistics are more accurate.

The SBSC, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group, followed the JEC meeting by declaring that the popularity of the payroll numbers was simply an example of Washington missing "the importance of small business and entrepreneurs to the economy."

Ray Keating, chief economist for the group, said the household survey "captures a host of things that the payroll or the employee survey doesn't, most notably self-employed folks at home." As such, he added, it's inherently more reliable.

The actual issue of unemployment, he noted, was "a media phenomenon."

"There is a tendency to highlight, I think, more of the negative aspects when you see numbers."

But even if the household survey does reflect some of the self- employed excluded by the payroll survey, said Irwin Kellner, chief economist for CBS Marketwatch.com and North Fork Bank, it may still be insignificant. The majority of people that have gone into business for themselves, he added, probably aren't making any money.

"The bottom line is that the buying power of employees continues to track lower than the average of past recoveries. It doesn't matter what the household numbers show, the fact of the matter is that people are not making much money because so many of them are out of work. Those that say there are in business for themselves aren't doing so well."