Employment will improve more this year than economists previously estimated, helping the world's largest economy to keep growing, a private survey showed.

Payrolls will rise 170,000 a month on average in 2012, up from a November projection of 127,000, according to the results of a survey by the National Association for Business Economics issued today in Washington. Unemployment will average 8.3 percent, down from 8.9 percent in the prior forecast.

The better outlook for jobs coincides with larger gains in business investment and homebuilding than were anticipated, the survey showed. At the same time, economists maintained forecasts for consumer spending, which may rise 2.1 percent, and predicted economic growth of 2.4 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, unchanged from the November survey.