WASHINGTON, Sept 3, 2021 (AFP) - The United States gained only 235,000 jobs last month, according to government data released Friday, a total far below expectations that may indicate the Delta variant is harming the US economic recovery.

The payroll increase reported by the Labor Department in August was sharply lower than the upwardly revised 1.1 million positions added in July, but the unemployment rate nonetheless declined to 5.2 percent from 5.4 percent.

While they correctly predicted the unemployment rate, analysts had expected the economy to gain 750,000 jobs last month.

The weak hiring comes as states and business impose mask-wearing requirements and other restrictions to fend off the fast-spreading Delta variant.

"The economy can't recover and fully reopen unless we can contain the spread of the virus -- devastating," Diane Swonk of Grant Thornton wrote on Twitter of the data.

After the economy lost millions of jobs as the pandemic started last year, Covid-19 vaccines have allowed for strong rehiring in recent months, but the report said 8.4 million people remain unemployed across the country.

There were ominous signs for the world's largest economy elsewhere in the report.

The leisure and hospitality sector, which bore the brunt of the initial layoffs as the pandemic began, had added an average of 350,000 positions per-month over the last six months, but in August it added zero positions, the data showed.

There was no improvement either in the labor force participation rate, which was at 61.7 percent in August, around the range it has hovered at for more than a year.

Among racial groups, adult men and white Americans saw their unemployment rates decline, but joblessness remained little changed for others, including Black Americans with 8.8 percent unemployment, and Hispanics, for whom unemployment was 6.4 percent.

Industries that did add jobs last month include professional and business services, which rose 74,000, transportation and warehousing, which gained 53,000, and private education, which added 40,000.