Load measurements having low computational complexity are provided that give an effective load after interference suppression. The effective load after interference may be compared with the air interface load to determine interference suppression gains for different user constellations. The interference suppression gains may be stored in the form of a gain table that gives the expected interference suppression gains for different user constellations. The expected interference suppression gains may be used by a scheduler at a base station to predict the effective load for two or more candidate user constellations, and to select one of the candidate user constellations. Users are then scheduled according to the selected user constellation.