WASHINGTON - THE recession-mired US economy has begun to stabilise but a recovery will be 'bumpy' and 'fragile,' Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Monday.

Mr Geithner said that 'things have clearly stabilised' since the world's largest economy sank into recession in December 2007.

'The pace of decline in most measures has slowed quite a lot. That is an important beginning,' he said at a forum organised by Newsweek magazine in Washington DC.

Mr Geithner pointed to 'improvements in the credit markets' but sidestepped a question about whether the downturn had hit bottom.

'We will not have a steady, even process of repair. It is going to be bumpy ... fragile for a while,' he said.

The Treasury chief's remarks were in line with those of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, who said earlier this month that the US economy was expected to resume growth before the end of the year, but that recovery would be slow.

The economy shrank 6.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 after a punishing 6.3 per cent contraction in the previous quarter.

Unemployment set to rise

Mr Geither added that even though the US economy is stabilising, unemployment will continue to rise.

He said that even as the nation recovers from a recession, millions of Americans will still feel the pinch of the downturn because hiring tends to lag behind other improvements in the economy.

Mr Geithner called the recession the most challenging economic crisis that the nation has seen in generations. AFP, AP