WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said Thursday that the Fed was assessing whether the economy will continue to grow fast enough to reduce the high rate of unemployment without additional action by the central bank.


But he gave no indication that the Fed has decided to take such action.


Mr. Bernanke and other Fed officials have made clear in public appearances this week that they are troubled by the recent decline in reported job growth, the escalating crisis in Europe and the chaotic state of domestic fiscal policy.


But Mr. Bernanke told a Congressional committee Thursday that the Fed has not yet concluded that growth is slowing, nor that new measures to stimulate the economy are warranted. The Fed’s policy-making committee meets in two weeks.


“Economic growth appears poised to continue at a moderate pace over coming quarters, supported in part by accommodative monetary policy,” Mr. Bernanke told the Joint Economic Committee, an assessment that on its surface was little changed from his last public remarks on the state of the economy in late April.


Beneath the surface of that forecast, however, Mr. Bernanke said that the Fed is confused. The government estimated that employers added only 69,000 jobs in May, a marked slowdown from the reported pace earlier in the year. But other economic indicators show a relatively steady, if lackluster, expansion.


Mr. Bernanke said the decline in job growth could be a quirk in the data, or it could be a warning sign. And if hiring actually is slowing, he said, “more rapid gains in economic activity will be required to achieve significant further improvement.” That could well serve as the justification for a new round of stimulus.


“That’s the essential decision,” Mr. Bernanke said. “Will there be enough growth going forward to make material progress on the unemployment rate?”


The Fed chairman said that its existing efforts to support the economy remain necessary. The central bank has held short-term interest rates near zero since late 2008, and it has said that it plans to maintain that policy until late 2014 at least. It also has purchased more than $2 trillion in Treasury securities and mortgage securities to further reduce borrowing costs for businesses and consumers.


He also offered the standard affirmation that the Fed “remains prepared to take action as needed to protect the U.S. financial system and economy.” He noted that the risk of a European crisis, in particular, had intensified in recent weeks.


Mr. Bernanke’s remarks were more cautious than a speech Wednesday by the Fed’s vice chair, Janet Yellen, who said that the Fed might be justified in taking new action simply as insurance against the looming risks from Europe and elsewhere.


“It may well be appropriate to insure against adverse shocks that could push the economy into territory where a self-reinforcing downward spiral of economic weakness would be difficult to arrest,” Ms. Yellen said.


Members of the Fed’s board of governors rarely differ publicly with the chairman on the direction of monetary policy, and it is unclear whether there is in fact a practical distinction between the two views. Neither Ms. Yellen nor Mr. Bernanke made clear that they thought the Fed should take additional action.


Several other members of the Fed’s policy-making committee have suggested in recent days that they do not yet see sufficient reason for the Fed to take additional action, in part because the economic outlook is unusually murky.


“Our crystal balls are much cloudier than usual,” John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said Wednesday.


Mr. Bernanke, wearing a tie the color of money, also resumed his advocacy Thursday for Congress to confront the nation’s fiscal problems through a combination of short-term measures to boost growth and long-term measures to reduce the nation’s debts to a sustainable level.


He said he would be happier “if Congress would take some of this burden from us.”


The members of the committee, however, showed little sign of bridging the partisan differences that have largely paralyzed Congress. Democrats embraced Mr. Bernanke’s support of short-term stimulus; Republicans pressed him for the gory details of what would happen without debt reduction, and sought his affirmation, albeit vainly, that tax cuts were the best approach.


Republicans also pressed repeatedly for Mr. Bernanke to make a clear commitment that the Fed would take no further action to stimulate growth.


Representative Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican, asked Mr. Bernanke to “look the market in the eye” and “take a third round of quantitative easing off the table.”


Democrats, by contrast, inquired politely after the Fed’s plans and showed surprisingly little interest in pressing the Fed for new measures to boost growth.


Representative Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, made the nearest approach, calling on the Fed to act forcefully, but she did not ask Mr. Bernanke to commit to such a course of action, nor to explain why he has not done so.


In response to an earlier question, Mr. Bernanke said that the decision rested on the economic forecasts that Fed officials bring to the next meeting of its policy-making committee. He said officials “are still working” on those predictions.


He said that he saw little reason to worry about increased inflation and, as a consequence, the Fed is free to focus primarily on unemployment.