Jobless-benefits claims up last week

WASHINGTON - The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment benefits rose by 5,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 320,000, which is close to pre-recession levels and suggests a stable job market.

The four-week average of applications, a less volatile figure, fell by 3,500 to 327,000, the lowest level since late November, the Labor Department said Thursday.

Applications are a rough proxy for layoffs. Their current pace suggests that companies are confident enough about economic growth to keep their staff levels.

About 3.35 million people received unemployment benefits as of March 1, the latest figures available. That’s about 101,000 fewer than the previous week.

Unemployment claims at their current levels are historically consistent with monthly job growth or roughly 200,000, said Joshua Shapiro,chief U.S. economist at MFR.

Hiring accelerated in February after two months of meager jobs gains. Winter storms in January and December limited consumer spending, home buying and, consequently, economic growth. Employers added 175,000 jobs last month, up from 129,000 in January and close to the monthly average of the past two years, the Labor Department reported recently.

The national unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent. But the tenth of a percentage point increase happened, in part, for a positive reason: More people began looking for work and entered the job market.

Employers didn’t immediately hire most of them, causing the unemployment rate to increase. But the fact that they started job hunting suggests they were optimistic about their prospects.

Employers advertised more jobs in January, a separate government report said earlier this week, suggesting that hiring will likely remain steady in the coming months.

The weather did force about 6 million people with full-time jobs to work part time in February. Many of their paychecks will shrink, likely weighing on spending.

That has contributed to economists forecasting that economic growth will be at an annual rate of 2 percent or less in the first three months of this year, down from 2.4 percent in the final three months of last year. But as the weather improves, most analysts expect growth to rebound to an annual rate near 3 percent.

In a second report released Thursday, the index of U.S. leading indicators rose more than forecast in February, a sign the world’s largest economy will strengthen after a weather-induced slowdown in the first quarter.

The Conference Board’s gauge of the outlook for the next three to six months climbed 0.5 percent, the biggest gain since November, after a revised 0.1 percent gain the prior month, the New York-based group said. The median forecast of 49 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a 0.2 percent gain.

Job-market growth, climbing home values and record-high stock prices are adding to household wealth, which will probably help boost Americans’ confidence. More consumer spending, which makes up about 70 percent of the economy, could make businesses willing to invest and hire.

“The general trend is still positive, and that’s consistent with a pickup in the overall economy,” Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James & Associates Inc. in St. Petersburg, Fla., said before the report. “We look for things to pick up.”

Estimates in the Bloomberg survey of economists ranged from an increase of 0.5 percent to a decline of 0.2 percent.

Information for this article was contributed by Josh Boak of The Associated Press and by Jeanna Smialek and Kristy Scheuble of Bloomberg News.

Business, Pages 27 on 03/21/2014

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