Russia's jobless rate unexpectedly fell for the first time in a year last month, data showed Friday, in a sign that the country's first recession in a decade may have reached bottom.

Some 200,000 Russians found work last month, taking the unemployment rate down to 9.9 percent from April's nine-year high of 10.2 percent, according to figures from the State Statistics Service. Economists' consensus forecast was 10.3 percent.

The lower number of jobless was seasonal, and "we can't interpret this as an improvement in the labor market," Tatyana Orlova, an economist at ING in Moscow, said by phone Friday.

Investors have been looking for green shoots in the Russian economy, which has fallen prey to lower oil prices while the global slowdown has reduced demand for its commodities. The credit crunch has left companies struggling to refinance their foreign loans secured in better days.

"There is some ground for optimism," said Yaroslav Lissovolik, chief strategist at Deutsche Bank in Moscow.

"If the oil prices hold at current levels, I think we can hope that the peak [of the slowdown] has been passed."

News of output and job cuts from companies has largely dried up in the last couple of months, with most sticking by their previously announced anti-crisis plans.

Any path towards a recovery will be long, however, with economic growth not expected to return until 2010 and real disposable incomes falling in May.

"Despite a series of positive signals, conditions in the economy remain difficult," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday at a government meeting in the southern Siberian city of Barnaul. "Most industries are gradually adapting to the new economic realities."

Industrial production stabilized at 15 percent to 17 percent below last year's level, he said.

In a sign that the $1.7 trillion economy is not out of the woods yet, data earlier last week showed that industrial output contracted a record 17.1 percent year on year in May, and wage arrears were at their highest since late 2005.

"Data from industrial output and a rising number of workers being affected by wage arrears suggest that the economy will only come out of this crisis very gradually," said Lars Rasmussen, analyst at Danske Bank.

Despite the improvement in the last month, Russia now has 3 million more unemployed than before the crisis hit last fall, while many more have faced cuts in salaries and working hours.

Capital investment shrank 23.1 percent in year-on-year terms, its worst performance in more than a decade, although in month-on-month terms there was an improvement.

(Reuters, Bloomberg)