Unemployment rate holds firm
Labour market forecast signals three-year low
New York: Job growth probably picked up in May after the weakest gain in six months, and the US unemployment rate held at a three-year low, signs of gradual improvement in the labour market, economists said before reports this week.
Payrolls climbed by 150,000 workers after a 115,000 gain in April, according to the median forecast of 68 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News ahead of Labour Department figures due on June 1. Manufacturing cooled and household purchases increased, other data may show.
Bigger job and wage gains will probably be needed to trigger a cycle of increases in hiring and consumer spending that will spur the recovery. At the same time, slowdowns in Europe and parts of Asia threaten to curb exports and manufacturing.
"We have a labour market that's improving, but not the kind of job growth that would really propel the recovery to a stronger phase," said Julia Coronado, chief economist for North America at BNP Paribas in New York.
"Barring a bad scenario in Europe, we would expect some stronger numbers in the second half of the year."
Private payroll climbed 160,000 in May after rising 130,000 last month, the weakest since August, economists forecast the Labour Department report will show.
The projected gain in total payrolls would bring the monthly average this year to 318,000, compared with 176,200 in the first five months of 2011.
The jobless rate, derived from a survey of households, held at a three-year low of 8.1 per cent in May, economists in the Bloomberg survey predicted. Unemployment has exceeded eight per cent since February 2009, the longest such stretch since monthly records began in 1948.
