Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- The number of Americans filing initial claims for unemployment benefits last week may have held close to the lowest in almost three years, suggesting companies are retaining more workers, economists said in advance of a government report today. Jobless filings may have edged up to 345,000 for the week ended Saturday, based on the median estimate of 28 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Claims the previous week fell to 339,000, the fewest since Jan. 20, 2001, according to the Labor Department in Washington. Faster economic growth in the second half of last year helped boost corporate profits, giving companies the means to increase hiring to help meet demand. A survey this week showed that businesses scaled back plans for job cuts last month amid forecasts for the quickest economic growth this year since 1999. ``With economic growth surging in the third quarter, businesses have begun to shed their cautious ways, boosting desired inventories, capital spending and even payrolls,'' said Peter Kretzmer, a senior economist at Banc of America Securities Inc. in New York.
The Labor Department is to issue the jobless claims report at 8:30 a.m. in Washington. Estimates in the survey ranged from 337,000 to 350,000. Initial jobless claims have dropped for three consecutive weeks. Also today, the Commerce Department may report at 10 a.m. in Washington that wholesale inventories increased 0.4 percent in November, the third straight monthly gain, according to the median forecast. The Federal Reserve may report that non-mortgage consumer borrowing expanded by $5 billion in November, more than five times the previous month's gain, according to the median forecast. The report is set for 3 p.m. in Washington.
Fewer Job Cuts
The economy may have added 150,000 jobs in December for a fifth straight month of employment gains while unemployment held at 5.9 percent, based on the median estimate of economists in a Bloomberg News survey. The Labor Department is to issue its December jobs report at 8:30 a.m. Friday. Job-cut announcements last month dropped 6.5 percent from November, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., a Chicago-based placement firm. The total of planned payroll reductions fell 16 percent in 2003 from a year earlier, the survey found. Standard & Poor's 500 Index members will report that profits grew by 22.3 percent on average in the fourth quarter, according to analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.
`Stable Employment'
``We've seen some hiring, and we haven't seen unemployment grow,'' said Jeffrey Levy, president of Norwalk, Connecticut- based Emcor Group Inc., which provides construction and facilities-management services, in an interview Monday. ``It's been a pretty stable employment picture for us the past six to nine months, and I think a lot of that has been driven by the demand for renovations and upgrades'' to buildings. John Devine, vice chairman and chief financial officer of General Motors Corp., the world's biggest automaker, said the pace of hiring in the U.S. auto industry probably won't pick up significantly. ``The mistake we made in years past is we did it in peaks and valleys on people. You can't run the business that way, you have to run it as flat as you can,'' Devine said in an interview this week in Detroit. ``We do it carefully and selectively, but we don't see massive ups or massive downs.'' //www.bloomberg.com