WASHINGTON: Evidence that the US economic rebound remains sluggish emerged from reports Thursday on new claims for unemployment aid and orders to America’s factories.
Scant job creation is restraining consumer spending and holding back economic growth. And factory orders for durable goods, a barometer of the manufacturing industry, are rising too slightly to provide much fuel to the rebound.
The number of people claiming jobless aid fell last week, but less than expected. And orders for big-ticket manufactured goods rose only slightly.
In its report on jobless claims, the Labor Department said first-time claims dropped 8,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 470,000. Analysts had expected a steeper drop to 450,000, according to Thomson Reuters.
The four week average, which smooths out volatility, rose for the second straight week to 456,250. The average had fallen for 19 straight weeks before starting to rise.
Two weeks ago, claims surged by 34,000 due to administrative backlogs left over from the holidays in the state agencies that process the claims, a Labor Department analyst said. Those delays may still be affecting the data, the analyst said.
That means the current figures could be artificially inflated. At the same time, it would also mean that the steep drop in claims in late December and early January was also exaggerated by the backlogs.
Economists closely watch initial claims as a gauge of the pace of layoffs and a sign of companies’ willingness to hire new workers.
The Commerce Department report on orders to factories for manufactured goods rose 0.3 percent in December. That was far less than the 2 percent advance economists had expected. And for all of 2009, durable goods orders plunged 20.2 percent, the largest drop on records dating to 1992.
The decline highlighted the battering that US manufacturers suffered during the recession, despite signs that manufacturing is recovering gradually.
