BEN Bernanke, U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, said the U.S. job market is not as strong as the steadily declining unemployment rate might suggest.

Responding to questions at a U.S. Senate hearing early yesterday, he noted the unemployment rate does not capture the plight of millions of people who have stopped looking for work or part-timers who cannot find full-time jobs.

His cautious view helps explain why the U.S. Federal Reserve plans to hold interest rates at record lows until late 2014. Many economists were looking to see if Bernanke might waver on that stance after Friday’s news that hiring surged last month and the unemployment rate dropped to a three-year low of 8.3 percent.

The chairman stuck with the three-year time line.

None of the senators asked Bernanke whether the encouraging job figures were reason enough for the Fed to rethink holding interest rates low for that long. And Bernanke did not tout the hiring data during the two-hour hearing.

If anything, Bernanke maintained the Fed’s position: The U.S. economy is improving at a frustratingly slow pace and low rates are necessary to boost growth.

Bernanke agreed with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, that an unemployment rate of 8.3 percent is understating the jobs problem.

“It’s very important to look not just at the unemployment rate, which reflects only people who are actively seeking work,” Bernanke said. (SD-Agencies)

“There are also a lot of people who are either out of the labor force because they do not think they can find work. There are also a lot of people who are working part-time, and they would like to be working full-time but they cannot find full-time work.”

The Fed has kept its benchmark interest rate near zero for the past three years. In its policy statement last month, the Fed said it would probably not increase that rate until late 2014 at the earliest *****- a year and a half later than it had previously said.

During the hearing, Republicans repeated familiar concerns. They said keeping rates down could raise the risk of inflation and low rates punish traditional savers.