At a time when US President George W Bush's campaign managers are trying to project economic growth as one of his major achievements, the American economy has added just 21,000 jobs in February, far short of the 125,000 jobs that analysts expected despite official figures showing an expansion in the economy in the last six months.

Experts were listing outsourcing, particularly to India and China, and companies trying to improve productivity as causes for the weak job growth.

As the much-awaited figures were released for the last month, both political and economic analysts agreed that it is bad news for the Bush campaign at a time when it is trying to project strong economic growth among the major achievements of President George Bush.

The economy and jobs is going to be a major issue especially as the country has lost 2.2 million jobs since Bush became the President. How the job market develops would also test Bush's tax cuts which Democrats say have benefited only the rich, analysts said.

Economists also said one of the major reasons was that employers, unlike in previous years, were not hiring workers till the demand for their services and products increased to an extent that the current level of employees could not cope up with it.

Another was that the recent corporate scandals had made the top managers very cautious in the way they do business.