Billionaire investor Eli Broad said the US economy is in the "worst period" of his adult life as a housing market recovery remains "several years" away.

"This is worse than any recession we've had since World War II," Broad, 75, said in an interview. Broad, the founder of homebuilder KB Home, said the US should avoid a depression on the scale of the 1930s because the country now has sufficient "safety nets".

The economy expanded at an annual rate of 1 percent in the first quarter, the Commerce Department said last week. That caps the weakest six months of growth in five years. The US lost 49,000 jobs in May, when the unemployment rate rose to 5.5 percent, the fifth straight month with a drop in payrolls and the biggest jump in the jobless rate in more than two decades.