Job, housing data hurt recovery hopes

WASHINGTON (AP) — Worse-than-expected news on unemployment and home sales Thursday dampened optimism that a broad economic recovery might be near.

Many analysts don’t expect the housing slide to show signs of stabilizing until the second half of this year. They said layoffs may be at their high point but that the jobless rate, already at a 25-year high, will keep rising until the middle of 2010.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that initial claims for unemployment compensation rose to a seasonally adjusted 640,000 last week, up from a revised 613,000 the previous week. That was slightly more than analysts’ expectations of 635,000.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors said sales of existing homes fell 3 percent in March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.57 million units, with February revised down to 4.71 million units. Sales had been expected to fall to an annual rate of 4.7 million units, according to Thomson Reuters.

The best reading of the new data is that late last year’s alarming free fall is coming to an end, analysts said.

“The economic downturn remains intense, but it is no longer intensifying,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “We are still falling, but we are no longer crashing.”

Zandi said the weekly number of new applications for unemployment benefits, a key measure of layoffs, has begun to level off at a very high point. The unemployment rate will keep rising for the rest of this year and into 2010 since it measures layoffs and the ability of new entrants into the labor market to find a job, he added.

On the housing front, IHS Global Insight economist Patrick Newport is still forecasting further declines in construction, sales and prices. He expects existing home sales will bottom out in the second half of this year, partly reflecting a significant improvement in affordability.

IHS forecasts unemployment, currently at a 25-year high, will peak at 10.2 percent in the spring and summer of next year, Newport said. The latest jobless claims data suggest the unemployment rate for April will jump to 8.9 percent with employers cutting another 625,000 jobs. That report will be released May 8.

In March, the jobless rate hit 8.5 percent with businesses slashing a net total of 663,000 jobs.

The report from the National Association of Realtors showed that the median sales price for an existing home in March plunged to $175,200, from $200,100 a year earlier.