WASHINGTON: The United States will get its latest unemployment count Friday, with high expectations that the tally will herald an improving job market and a quickening economic recovery.

Early Friday the Labor Department publishes its March jobs report, which is expected to show the first substantial increase in payrolls for more than two years.

With close to one in 10 American workers out of work, the monthly job count -- always an eagerly awaited indicator -- is being seen as pivotal.

Ordinary Americans will look for hints that the worst of their economic woes are over. Since the recession began in December 2007 the economy has shed more than eight million jobs, leaving many households struggling to make ends meet.

Investors, groping around for guidance amid the worst market upheaval in a generation, will scan the report for signs that the US economic recovery is real and sustainable.

At the White House, President Barack Obama will look for a sign that perhaps his biggest political challenge has become a little less difficult as the country heads for midterm elections in November.

More than 80 percent of Americans say unemployment will be extremely important or very important to their vote, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll published Thursday.

In February the Labor Department reported that nearly 15 million Americans were unemployed -- a rate of 9.7 percent -- and that 36,000 people left the country's nonfarm payrolls.

Economists expect the March unemployment rate to stay put at 9.7 percent, but for 190,000 people to be added to the payrolls, the gain offset by a growing work force.

Still if that estimate is proven correct, it would be the largest hiring rise in three years.

Experts say their optimism is justified, despite a slew of negative or indifferent indicators about the state of the US jobs market since last month.

They suspect that previous figures have been skewed by bad winter weather that forced some firms to shut up shop and delay hiring, and that this pent up activity was unleashed in March.

Employment levels may also be boosted by the Census Bureau hiring of tens of thousands of workers to conduct its 2010 survey.

Analysts at Barclays Capital, which expects payrolls to increase as much as 250,000, said census hiring could make up half of that figure.

With stock markets closed on Friday to mark Good Friday, the reaction from investors will have to wait until Monday.

Few analysts have illusions about the difficulties ahead.

"The improvement in these indicators is off of very low levels, so we would definitely need to see further gains for us to become confident in the labor market recovery," Deutsche Bank told clients.

Peter Morici, an economics professor at the University of Maryland agreed: "The pace of private jobs creation won't be enough to restore the economy to good health quickly," he said.

"Overall, the economy must add more than 13 million jobs to bring unemployment down to six percent by the end of 2013."