Cummins Inc. and Kohl’s Corp. are accelerating equipment purchases to boost productivity, reinforcing an unprecedented gap between capital spending and employment in the United States that’s restraining a rebound in hiring, Bloomberg said.

Corporate investment will rise 11 percent this year as sales pick up, following a 15 percent gain in 2010, according to a report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Employment will grow just 1.7 percent, after a 0.7 percent increase last year, the study projects.

Inventory rebuilding, low borrowing costs and government policies that include a new tax break on equipment purchases are powerful spurs for capital spending, says Neil Dutta, the Bank of America economist who wrote the report. The job market lacks such drivers and will form a “mediocre” underpinning for household spending, the biggest part of gross domestic product, he said.

“Machines have the upper hand,” Dutta told Bloomberg.

Even if payrolls rise more than economists’ median estimates of 195,000 this month, that’s “nowhere near the kind of growth we need to see,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute.

“The capital-spending boom will continue this year and into next year,” helped by emerging markets, said Robert Baur, chief global economist at Principal Global Investors in Des Moines, which manages $232.4 billion. “Companies underinvested to such an extent and for so long that there’s a great deal of catch-up to be done.”

Baur said investors have opportunities for more gains this year in technology, energy, manufacturing and basic materials including commodities and mining. Principal Global owns shares of Eaton Corp., AGCO Corp. and Joy Global Inc., which have risen an average of 55 percent in the past year.

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