Weak Jobs Report Cited in Call for Extended Jobless Benefits

WASHINGTON — A surprisingly weak December jobs report has strengthened Democrats’ hand in arguing for an extension of emergency jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed.

But that argument looks unlikely to translate into a policy victory, analysts said, with Republicans steadfast that the economy needs more jobs, not more government largess.

On Friday, the Labor Department said that the unemployment rate dropped to a five-year low of 6.7 percent. But the economy added only 74,000 jobs, and for every American who found work, five disappeared from the labor force.

Democrats are arguing that those anemic numbers underscore the need for Washington to revive an expired program that provided supplemental weeks of unemployment insurance payments to workers, as long as they kept on applying for jobs.

In a statement, Jason L. Furman, the chairman of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, called long-term unemployment “one of our nation’s most immediate and pressing challenges.”

He continued: “Despite an abundance of evidence indicating that this challenge is far from solved, Congress allowed extended unemployment insurance to lapse at the end of 2013, cutting off a critical lifeline to those who lost a job through no fault of their own and are still searching for work.”

But Republicans are arguing that the report underscores that President Obama’s economic policies have failed, and that Congress should focus on spurring businesses to hire, in part by reducing regulatory requirements and cutting taxes.

“Every American has a right to ask the question ‘Where are the jobs?' ” said Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio. “Instead of making it easier to find a good-paying job, Washington has been more focused on making it less difficult to live without one.”

At the end of the year, the emergency federal program abruptly expired, cutting off about 1.3 million workers who have been out of a job for more than six months. After the expiry, the proportion of jobless Americans receiving unemployment insurance payments fell to its lowest level in more than 50 years.

Democrats have sought to extend the program, with three-month and 11-month proposals gaining traction in Congress. Senate Republicans have indicated they would be willing to extend the benefits, but only if the cost is offset with cuts from elsewhere in the budget.

On Thursday, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada dismissed Republicans’ amendments to an unemployment extension deal, dimming the chances that a compromise will pass through the Senate. Even if a bill does pass that chamber, it would almost certainly founder in the Republican-controlled House.

Democrats have promised to continue to push for the extension, saying that millions of jobless workers still need the government lifeline. “The safety net has been just ripped away,” Mr. Reid said at a news conference this week. “The economy’s improving, but not for everybody.”

Economists said that it was likely that some of the weakness in the December numbers might get revised away. The Labor Department revised up its estimate of job growth in previous months, and recent data on economic growth has been surprisingly strong.

“It is difficult to determine how much of this report is ‘signal’ and how much is ‘noise,' ” said Paul Edelstein of IHS Global Insight, a research firm.

Whatever the short-term outlook, the underlying performance of the economy continues to leave millions of working-age people so discouraged that they no longer even bother to look for a job.

“What we’ve been seeing over the past year is very steady, modest job growth,” said Erica L. Groshen, the commissioner of labor statistics at the Labor Department, speaking before a congressional panel on Friday. “Yet there’s still a long ways to go.”