With interest rates at 45-year lows, following 13 reductions by the Federal Reserve, those who are looking for work can rightly ask: When will the results kick in? When will employers unleash some hiring?

Payrolls have been in decline for much of the last two years, and unemployment is at a nine-year high, so the answers are growing critical. A dearth of help-wanted advertising and subpar activity among recruitment firms tells job seekers that the current scene remains far from optimal.

Worse, economists believe historical evidence points to a hiring lag of at least several more months. Their theory: Businesses will remain hesitant to expand payrolls until there is substantial evidence that revenues are fattening.

Which brings us to Thursday’s unemployment report for June. Chicago economist Robert Dederick expects it to show joblessness edging higher, to 6.2 percent, while payrolls decline by about 20,000 positions.

“There are signs the economy is beginning to lift,” said Dederick, a consultant to Northern Trust Co. “But the labor market still is struggling. Real improvement will take awhile.”

Areas of weakness, he said, include manufacturing, where some companies still are talking about cutbacks, and state and local governments, which are under tremendous financial pressure and can’t hire.

“The economy is starting to wake from its long slumber, but it is not yet alert enough to stir a rapid burst of hiring,” Dederick said. “Businesses remain quite cautious, and they are not yet ready to make a 180-degree turn.”

The nation’s factories have been unable to see much of a turnaround, hobbled by the worst problem with overcapacity in 20 years. Expect Tuesday’s June report from purchasing managers, as measured by the Institute for Supply Management, to show a gain to 50.5 from 49.4 a month earlier. Anything above 50 is seen as evidence that manufacturing is on the rise.

Another landmark event Tuesday: The long-awaited and much-debated tax cut takes effect. Economists believe it will add as much as $65 billion to disposable income during the second half of this year, with the only question being how much will find its way into retailers’ cash registers.

For months, the auto industry has had a single answer to the perplexing problem of weakening sales: layer on more incentives. While buyers now routinely expect a discount averaging about $3,000 per vehicle, some analysts are wondering how long Detroit can play the same old song.

Standard & Poor’s reported last week that, through May, sales volume at dealerships was off 2.1 percent from the same period last year. That was nothing to sneeze at, though, because many buyers are driving home in expensive sport-utility vehicles and gargantuan pickups.

Expect Tuesday’s reports of June car and light truck sales to barely keep pace with the ho-hum level of a year earlier, with an annual rate of about 16 million units. For the year as a whole, analysts are looking for volumes to finish about 4 percent below the totals for 2002.

As the stock market prepares to end the first half of the year Monday, a flood of corporate earnings reports is about to cascade down onto investors, and some of the results are bound to be soggy.

A few companies already are set to blame the weather, citing the wettest spring in a century in parts of the East. Others have pre-emptively begun to blame the SARS virus.

However, Chicago investment manager William Hummer says the outlook for corporate profits is not nearly as bleak as it was a couple of months ago.

“We are expecting second-quarter results to be up by 6 to 8 percent from a year earlier, and before the end of this year, profits will be growing at a double-digit rate,” said Hummer, of Wayne Hummer Investments.

Companies are beginning to reap the results from ruthless cost-cutting, he said, while revenues are growing.

The result, Hummer said, will be better profits and a brighter mood on Wall Street in the months ahead.