The Labor Department reports on the number of people who applied for U.S. unemployment benefits last week. The report will be released at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time Thursday.
RISE POSSIBLE: Economists forecast that applications ticked up 3,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 341,000. That would follow a sharp drop of 42,000 to 338,000 in the previous week.
The figures from late November and December have been warped by seasonal volatility around the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. The decline two weeks ago followed large increases totaling 75,000 in the first two weeks of December.
JOB MARKET, ECONOMY IMPROVING: Before the volatility disrupted the numbers, unemployment benefit applications had fallen back to pre-recession levels. That's because companies were laying off fewer workers.
At the same time, hiring has picked up. Employers added an average of 200,000 jobs a month in the past four months. That's helped lower the unemployment rate to a five-year low of 7 percent.
There have been other recent signs the economy is continuing to improve. Americans are more confident and spending more. And orders to U.S. manufacturers jumped in November, a sign that businesses are spending more on factory-made items such as machinery, computers and electrical goods.
Not all the data have been positive: Income rose at a slower pace than spending last month. That means Americans saved less to spend more. And existing home sales have fallen for three straight months, held back by higher prices and mortgage rates.
Still, the economy expanded at a 4.1 percent annual rate in the third quarter, the best showing in nearly two years. The healthy gain largely reflected a jump in restocking, as companies built up their inventories. That's unlikely to be repeated in the current quarter. But many economists have become more optimistic about the fourth quarter and expect growth will clock in at a solid 2.5 percent annual rate.
BENEFIT CUT-OFF: Fewer people will likely receive benefits in 2014 because a five-year old emergency federal program expired Dec. 28. The program provided up to 47 extra weeks of unemployment benefits, paid for by the federal government. That will cut off benefits for as many as 1.3 million people, according to the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group.
The impact probably won't show up in the data for at least two more weeks, because the figures for total benefit recipients are released with a two-week lag.
Economists predict that the benefit cut-off will cause the unemployment rate to fall by as much as a quarter of percentage point in early 2014. But they worry that the drop will likely occur because many of the former recipients will give up on their job searches, which are required in order to receive benefits. Those out of work are only counted as unemployed by the government if they are actively searching for work.
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