Gov. Mark Sanford's point man for job growth defended his boss's record Wednesday and said he's hopeful the worst of the state's employment erosion is over.

Commerce Secretary Bob Faith told reporters and editors of The Greenville News, "I'm not here to say there's not a problem, (but) all hope is not lost. We haven't stopped creating jobs, we haven't stopped recruiting jobs. Businesses are still expanding."

Joe Erwin, a Greenville advertising executive and chairman of the state Democratic Party, said that despite Faith's comments, the Sanford record on the economy is poor.

"They have not demonstrated an ability to recruit as successfully as Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama. We have to measure ourselves against them. We are falling behind in the region, a very dangerous place to be economically and that is what is concerning so many business leaders. We can't afford it," Erwin said.

But Faith said the recent acquisition of a Vaught-Alenia plant that will make fuselage sections for Boeing's new "Dreamliner" in a Lowcountry facility is among the reasons "we're still a feared force" in regional competition.

Faith said there has been a net gain of 4,158 jobs created this year through July, a figure that compares to an annual average of 4,468 for the preceding 14 years.

That's after deducting jobs not recruited by Commerce, ones from existing business expansions and those that were announced but never materialized, he said. Faith said the agency changed the way it tracks job growth to give it a better picture of its own efforts even though it lowered the net change.

For example, the total of publicly announced new jobs for this year so far is 6,455, but deducting 2,297 from existing business expansions drops it to 4,158. The 35,132 announced jobs for 2000 falls to 4,469 under Faith's system.

Faith said, "We've been adding jobs at a decent pace, but we're still filling a leaky bucket."

South Carolina has lost 90,000 manufacturing jobs while seeing manufacturing employment decline to 14 percent of the workforce from 24 percent. The state's unemployment rate, while falling, is 6.1 percent, above the national average of 5 percent.

According to the July newsletter of the University of South Carolina's Moore School of Business, total employment declined each month this year through May when it dropped by 2,900 jobs, or seven-tenths of 1 percent.

Democrats are expected to make the status of the state's economy and Sanford's record a major issue in his re-election bid next year, but it's already brought criticism from within his party.

House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, has said Sanford has fallen short of his predecessors' industrial recruitment records, and a group of conservative business leaders has sought to recruit retired banker-ambassador Robert Royall to challenge Sanford in next year's primary.

Faith, a Charleston real estate executive when Sanford appointed him in January 2003, said Harrell was not familiar with the department's new methodology for tracking job growth.

"Speaker Harrell would like to see us try anything and everything as aggressively as we possibly can that may or may not have immediate impact. Gov. Sanford is more cautious and thoughtful in how he tries to think about what all to try," Faith said.

"There's a little difference in philosophy there," he said.

Faith dismissed the disaffected business leaders as change resistant.