He made his appearance today after the Labor Department reported that employers had shed nearly 200,000 jobs last month even before the terrorist attacks.

One notable weakness among service industries was in retail sales, where employers, on a seasonally adjusted basis that takes account of the typical extra hiring for holidays, shed roughly 20,000 jobs in December.

In the strongest signal yet that the booming American economy is slowing, the Labor Department reported yesterday that the nation's private-sector employers, instead of hiring, shed 116,000 jobs in May.

The nation's employers shed 223,000 jobs, the largest monthly decline since February 1991, in the middle of a recession.

Since then, various studies have demonstrated that employers do not shed workers when the minimum rises.

"Their inability to create more jobs than larger employers have been shedding is the central cause of stagnant employment in America."

The nation's employers shed 86,000 jobs in March, the largest loss for a single month in more than nine years and an indication to many economists that the United States may be on the verge of a recession.

"It looks to me like employers are finally either facing or expecting a level of demand that's much more convincing to them," Mr. Bernstein said "This is yet another piece of evidence that employers are shedding their excessively cautious ways."

Although major employers like Kodak shed thousands of jobs in the 1980's and 1990's, the region's industrial base, heavily reliant on manufacturing durable goods like air-conditioners and medical equipment, remained for the most part intact.

And not by a little bit: their much-quoted research estimated that the plan would cause employers to shed 800,000 to 2.1 million workers, mostly in low-wage positions.