The U.S. unemployment rate is expected to remain unchanged for October when the government releases its monthly jobs report on Friday.

Economists are predicting the nation's economy added at least 95,000 jobs last month, keeping the unemployment rate at 9.1 percent for the fourth consecutive month. The number of non-government or private sector jobs is expected to rise by 125,000, while the number of government jobs is expected to decrease by at least 25,000.

The economy needs to add about 150,000 new jobs a month to sufficiently bring down the jobless rate.

The U.S. economy has been struggling to recover from the 2008 global recession, which led to loss of more than eight million jobs. Recent government reports suggest the economy has slowly begun to improve — the number of people applying for unemployment insurance last week fell below 400,000, while the economy grew 2.5 percent in the third quarter of this year.

But the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, predicted earlier this week the economy will only grow between 2.5 and 2.9 percent in 2012, with the jobless rate averaging 8.6 percent.