WASHINGTON — Employment will improve more this year than economists previously estimated, helping the world’s largest economy keep growing, a private survey showed.
Payrolls will rise by 188,000 a month on average in 2012, up from a February projection of 170,000, according to the results of a survey by the National Association for Business Economics issued Monday in Washington. Unemployment will average 8 percent in the fourth quarter, little changed from the three-year low of 8.1 percent reached last month.
The U.S. economy is forecast to grow 2.3 percent this year, the same as projected in February, and expand 2.7 percent in 2013. Inflation will probably remain in check, holding around the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent goal through next year, while joblessness limits gains in consumer spending, the survey showed.
Forecasters “expect moderate growth in the near-term with improvement coming in the post-election year,” Shawn DuBravac, chief economist at the Consumer Electronics Association and the survey’s chairman, said in a statement. “Expectations for housing, vehicle sales, employment, and industrial production all improved.”
Responses in the survey, taken from April 19 through May 2, didn’t reflect the results of the latest jobs report, issued May 4. Employers added 115,000 workers to payrolls in April, the fewest in six months, and the jobless rate dropped as people left the labor force, according to Labor Department data.
The job market may accelerate further next year, the survey showed. Payroll gains are forecast to average 200,000 a month in 2013, and the unemployment rate may drop to 7.5 percent in the last three months of that year.
Inflation will probably be contained even as the economy expands. Prices tied to consumer spending and excluding food and fuel, the co-called core personal-consumption-expenditures index, will increase 2 percent this year and next, the survey showed. While higher than projected in the February survey, the gain is in line with the Fed’s long-term forecast.
