UPDATE 1-US 3M T-bill yield hurdles 1 pct after auction

NEW YORK, March 24 (Reuters) - The yield on three-month U.S. Treasury bills jumped above 1 percent for the first time in three sessions on Monday after the government's $24 billion auction of this maturity fetched a high rate of 1.200 percent.

The three-month T-bill yield, which fell to its lowest in 50-plus years last week, rose to 1.09 percent, up from 0.53 percent late on Thursday. U.S. fixed income markets were closed on Friday.

"To put this in perspective, we were close to 50-year lows, so in order for the auction to clear you needed higher yields," said George Goncalves, chief Treasury/TIPS and agency strategist with Morgan Stanley in New York. "But the auction was able to get done with decent interest," he added.

Earlier on Monday, U.S. Treasury bill yields started to rise as risk aversion ebbed and investors started venturing into riskier assets such as stocks, which rallied sharply after JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) increased its offer to buy Bear Stearns Cos BSC.N.

(Reporting by Richard Leong and John Parry, Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)