WASHINGTON — A bit of sour news Thursday — in the form of increased jobless claims and higher wholesale prices — suggested the economy is moving in fits and starts, even as the recession eases.
Analysts said the pace of unemployment claims should slow after auto-industry layoffs are completed. Inflation, meanwhile, remains under control, and any threat of a dangerous bout of falling prices seems remote.
The number of new jobless claims rose to a seasonally adjusted 637,000, from a revised 605,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said. That exceeded analysts’ expectations of 610,000.
Economists noted that initial claims remain below a peak reached in late March — a sign that the wave of mass layoffs announced earlier this year probably has crested.
“This is yet more evidence that we are now past the worst,” Paul Dales, U.S. economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a research note.
Separately, the department said wholesale prices climbed 0.3 percent last month, larger than the 0.1 percent gain economists had expected. The biggest jump in food costs in more than a year offset a second monthly decline in the price of energy products.
A 43.7 percent rise in egg prices helped drive food costs higher. The jump, the largest on records dating to 1992, was partly a one-time blip because Easter occurred in April, said Labor Department economist Scott Sager.
