NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - A world manufacturing slump eased in January but the data showed the global economic downturn, which Beijing said had already cost as many as 20 million jobs, was still in full swing.

The biggest improvement was in the Institute for Supply Management’s index of U.S. factories, which climbed to a still-anemic 35.6 in January from 32.6 in December. European and Chinese surveys also edged higher.

Yet the outlook for U.S. consumer spending, which accounts for two-thirds of the world’s largest economy, remained bleak. Spending rose just 3.6 percent in 2008 as a whole, the smallest increase since 1961.

Against that backdrop, analysts said it was difficult to envision any near-term rebound in global growth.

“With incomes falling and confidence shattered, we have to expect spending to keep falling for some months yet,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York.

With that in mind, U.S. President Barack Obama called Democratic congressional leaders to a meeting on Monday to drive home his message of urgency in passing an $800 billion economic stimulus package.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was also urging that strong and effective stimulus plans be enacted to boost economies hit by the global financial crisis.

INKLING OF STABILIZATION

Like the ISM survey of U.S. factories, surveys of manufacturing firms in Europe and China suggested at the very least that things were not getting worse as quickly as in previous months.

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In Europe, a survey of about 3,000 manufacturers showed only Germany among the euro currency zone’s leading four economies registered a deepening contraction in January. France, Italy, and Spain all saw some slowing in the pace of decline.

The Markit Eurozone Manufacturing purchasing managers’ index for January rose to 34.4 from 33.9 in December, the eighth month in a row the index was below 50.0, which separates growth from contraction.

A similar purchasing managers’ index on China, produced for brokerage CLSA, rose to 42.2 in January from 41.2 in December, indicating conditions were deteriorating but at a slower pace.

China Premier Wen Jiabao also pointed to signs of recovery.

“During the last 10 days of December it started to get better,” Wen told a business audience in London. “The goods piled up in port started to decrease and the price of industrial products started to rise.”

But data from the United States showed consumers cut spending for a sixth straight month in December and their incomes shrank.

The index of leading European shares dropped 2.11 percent, while the Dow Jones industrial average was off 1 percent, having suffered its worst-ever January.

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JOBLESS BY THE MILLIONS

Chen Xiwen, director of China’s Office of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, said a recent survey showed 15.3 percent of the 130 million migrants moving from villages to cities and factories had returned jobless to the countryside.

That, combined with this year’s 6 to 7 million new entrants in the rural labor market, would leave China with about 25 million jobless and potentially restive rural unemployed this year, Chen said.

South Korea reported its biggest-ever plunge in exports and a slide in the value of the rouble highlighted the dramatic change of fortunes for oil-rich Russia, where thousands took to the streets at the weekend over deteriorating conditions.

The Russian protests follow protests across several European countries in recent days and weeks, from Latvia and Bulgaria in the east to France, where upward of a million marched on Friday.

In South Korea, home to some of Asia’s top manufacturers and exporters, a 32.8 percent year-on-yearn drop in exports in January raised the specter of the first recession in more than a decade.

“The fall was really shocking,” said Jun Min-Kyoo, economist at Korea Investment & Securities.

India also showed more signs of the impact of the global crisis. Manufacturing activity contracted for the second month in a row in December, when exports also fell from a year earlier for the third straight month.

The global downturn started with a U.S. housing market slump that sparked a crisis in debt-derivatives markets and wiped out nearly $14 trillion in global stock market value last year as banks got into difficulty, requiring government bailouts.

The financial crisis has in turn triggered recession in all of the big industrialized economies, sharp slowdowns elsewhere and put millions of jobs on the line.