U.S. employers may have added 130,000 workers in February, the largest gain since shortly before George W. Bush became president more than three years ago, economists said in advance of today's government report.

A sixth straight increase in jobs would be the longest streak in almost four years. The unemployment rate may have held at 5.6 percent, a two-year low, based on the median of 63 forecasts in a Bloomberg News poll before the 8:30 a.m. Labor Department report in Washington.

Bush credits last year's tax cuts for stoking the economy, which grew by 6.1 percent in the July-December period, the strongest six months since 1984. Critics including Senator John F. Kerry, a Democrat preparing to challenge Bush in November's election, say the president hasn't done enough and cite the lost of 2.3 million jobs during his tenure.

Meeting or exceeding the February forecast ``would show that jobs are slowly catching up to economic growth,'' said Ellen Beeson, an economist at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi in New York, who forecast a gain of 140,000. ``It would also help buy some time for Bush, because he can point to that and say that things are only going to get better.''

The Federal Reserve is forecast to keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged when the Federal Open Market Committee meets March 16. Since June the Fed has held the rate at 1 percent, the lowest since 1958, to spur growth. Filings for unemployment insurance have dropped, corporate investment has risen, and an industry survey this week found that more manufacturers intend to add workers.

Job Gains

``If my forecast for robust economic growth materializes, then, at some point, a fed funds rate of 1 percent will no longer be the best policy,'' Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Jack Guynn said in a speech to real estate executives in Atlanta yesterday.

February's gain would be the biggest since 183,000 jobs were added in November 2000 and follow the addition of 112,000 jobs in January. Bush succeeded President Bill Clinton in January 2001.

``Anecdotally we're hearing more and more about businesses hiring, and I think we'll see bigger payroll increases as we get into the second quarter,'' said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh, before the report.

The forecast falls short of what would be needed to raise this year's average nonfarm payroll by 2.6 million to the 132.7 million level predicted by the White House last month. Bush and his advisers have declined to reiterate that target, which they said was compiled based on data as of Dec. 2, since the report was released last month.

Individual payroll estimates in the Bloomberg survey range from 210,000 by Brian Wesbury at Griffin, Kubik, Stephens & Thompson in Chicago to 45,000 by Richard Yamarone at Argus Research in New York.

Wesbury said job gains in this week's Institute for Supply Management's factory report figured ``front and center'' in his forecast. ``My belief is we're turning the corner,'' he said.

Consumer Confidence

Yamarone sees the situation differently. ``The economy can get away with expanding at its current 4 percent pace without any major increase in hiring,'' he said. ``Businesses are hiring workers overseas to keep costs down. All those investments in technological innovations in the late 1990s are yielding some serious dividends.''

Rising payrolls may help ease gloom that contributed last month to the biggest decline in consumer confidence in a year. More work may increase family incomes and spending. Manufacturers may have shed 2,000 jobs in February, the fewest since they added 26,000 in July 2000, according to the Bloomberg survey. Factory job losses have averaged 72,000 a month since then.

Signs have emerged that an accelerating pace of economic growth has begun to lead companies to fire fewer workers, and even add them. First-time claims for unemployment benefits have dropped to a weekly average of 350,000 this year from 403,000 in 2003. The number of Americans filing initial claims for last week fell by 7,000 to 345,000, close to a three-year low, a government report showed yesterday.

Productivity

``We actually had a slight increase in hiring in direct manufacturing labor jobs to respond to improvements in demand'' in the last quarter, said Ron Foster, chief financial officer of JDS Uniphase Corp., in an interview from Mountain View, California. JDS Uniphase is the world's largest maker of parts for fiber-optic networks.

Productivity, or the output for each hour an employee works, rose at a 2.6 percent annual pace last quarter, the Labor Department said yesterday. That's less than a third of the pace in the third quarter and a sign companies might have to hire to meet rising demand.

The Institute for Supply Management's index of factory employment in February rose to the highest since December 1987, the group reported Monday. The result may be an increase in factory hiring as companies replenish stockpiles and invest in new equipment. U.S. manufacturers have also been aided by a fall in the value of the dollar, which has made their goods cheaper abroad.

Applied Materials Inc., the world's biggest producer of equipment to make computer chips, may add about 500 factory jobs this year to help fill increasing orders. The Santa Clara, California, company may add people at its plants in Texas, Chief Financial Officer Joe Bronson told a Morgan Stanley semiconductor conference in Dana Point, California, this week.

Also today, the Federal Reserve may report consumer credit increased by $5 billion during January after rising $6.6 billion in December, according to the median of forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey of economists. The report, which tracks borrowing excluding home loans, will be issued at 3 p.m. Washington time.