President Obama said that America was showing signs of economic recovery, even as the country's unemployment rate hit a near-26-year high.

Employers made 539,000 workers redundant in April, according to US Labour Department statistics - the fewest job cuts in six months and far better than the 620,000 reduction that economists had expected.

Mr Obama said that there was a “long way to go before we can put this recession behind us”, but added: “The gears of our economic engine do seem to be slowly turning once again.”

The figures were boosted by a spate of hiring by the Government, which took on 66,000 part-time workers to conduct next year's census.

However, the newly unemployed continued to struggle to find new jobs, pushing the unemployment rate from 8.5 per cent to 8.9 per cent, the highest level since late 1983.

When the number of job-seekers who gave up their search for work or took part-time jobs was included, the unemployment rate hit 15.8 per cent.

About 5.7million Americans have lost their jobs since the recession started in December 2007.

Ben Bernanke, the US Federal Reserve Chairman, said this week that he expected the country to emerge from recession by the end of this year, but warned that the job market would remain sluggish because employers would take time to regain confidence and resume hiring.

Paul Ashworth, senior US economist at Capital Economics, had reservations about the figures because job-loss estimates earlier in the year have since been revised upwards.

In March, companies made 699,000 workers redundant, a figure that had been revised up from 663,000, while 681,000 workers lost their jobs in February, up from a previous estimate of 651,000. “Revisions to previous months increased the net job losses in February and March by a total of 66,000,” he said. “April's decline could eventually turn out to have been much bigger than it looks now.”

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