2012 starts on hopeful economic reports

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The job market is looking a little brighter at the start of the new year.

Weekly unemployment- benefit applications have fallen to levels last seen more than three years ago. Holiday sales were solid. Service companies grew a little faster in December. And many small businesses say they plan to add jobs over the next three months.

The mix of private and government data released Thursday sketched a picture of an economy that is slowly strengthening, stoking optimism one day ahead of the government’s important read on December job growth.

“Businesses have increased hiring to meet the underlying pickup in [consumer] demand,” said Neil Dutta, an economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

The encouraging reports on the U.S. economy gave Wall Street a late-day lift, offsetting renewed concerns over Europe’s debt crisis.

Weekly applications for unemployment benefits dropped to a seasonally adjusted 372,000 last week, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s 11 percent lower than the same time last year.

Almost the entire descent occurred this fall. Applications had fluctuated sharply over the first nine months of 2011, falling as low as 375,000 and rising as high as 478,000. By early September, they were at 432,000 — only 5,000 below where they began the year.

Since then, applications have declined steadily.