The White House's senior economic advisers delivered an upbeat message on the US economy yesterday, predicting robust job growth and denying that the outsourcing of work abroad was a serious problem.

In its annual Economic Report of the President, the White House Council of Economic Advisers, headed by former Harvard academic Mr Greg Mankiw, predicted that the US economy would grow by 4 per cent in 2004, close to the consensus of private forecasts. "The administration's forecast calls for the economic recovery to strengthen further this year," the report said.

It also forecast a growth of 2.6 million jobs, with the unemployment rate falling to 5.5 per cent. Such job gains would involve a marked acceleration from recent months, during which the growth in jobs - as measured by the key payroll survey of businesses - has continued to sputter.

They would also come as a tremendous relief to the Bush administration, which is under almost continual fire from Democrats for the failure of employment to pick up as it predicted despite strong economic growth.

Some economists and officials have taken comfort from the fact that job growth in the rival survey of households, from which the unemployment rate is calculated, has been much faster.

Mr Mankiw yesterday cautioned against taking either survey as the definitive picture of the labour market, though he noted: "The Bureau of Labor Statistics has said with some justification that they tend to trust the payroll survey because the sample size is larger."

Some economists have argued that the household survey picks up job growth in newly created companies, and so may give a more accurate picture of the labour market.

But the Federal Reserve continues to prefer the payroll survey.