The Labor Department Thursday morning released its weekly report on jobless claims, and the data held a little bit of a nasty surprise. During the past week, initial claims for jobless benefits increased by 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 472,000. The concern is that the economy has leveled out, as first-time claims have remained near 450,000, as they have been throughout the year.

The latest report suggests that the job market is slowing, which could affect the economy overall. As a result of this data, futures have backed off a bit but remain on the bullish side of the spectrum.

The Federal Reserve's next Beige Book report is scheduled to be released this week. This report is a compilation of anecdotal information on current economic conditions from each of the 12 Federal Reserve Bank districts, and it is released eight times a year. The data comes from interviews with business contacts, economists, market experts, and other sources. The June report is expected to show strengthening signs of expansion, though results could be mixed across the 12 districts.

Economic data due out this week include:

The Labor Department issued a bit of a nasty surprise this morning in its report on initial jobless claims. Last week, the department issued 25,000 new claims for unemployment benefits, far more than the expected drop of 6,000 claims. The resulting 471,000 total claims in the past week was the most in a month.

In addition, the four-week average of initial claims, which many see as a better gauge of employment because it smooths out the volatile weekly numbers -- increased. According to the Labor Department, there were no unusual factors contributing to the release.

Under the radar: Some trends are obvious enough and are visible to all investors. Others are more-subtle, but are just as potent, and these often slip 'under the radar.'

Case in point: The normal labor market pattern is for initial jobless claims to decline substantially as company lay-offs subside, and as more companies maintain current staffing levels and start hiring. But what if jobless claims persist at a high level, even after the U.S. economy reaches the condition of a strong expansion? That would be indicative of another dynamic in the U.S. job market.

The Labor Department announced Thursday that the number of people applying for unemployment benefits remained virtually unchanged from last week's 444,000 claims. In the most recent week, the number of jobless claims dropped by 4,000, but the data from a week earlier was revised up by 4,000.

The data came in higher than expected, as some experts called for a drop to 440,000 claims in the past week. In the wake of this data, Treasurys and the dollar have increased, while some of the morning's momentum was tempered.

Thursday morning, the Labor Department released a couple of tidbits of news. One of these news nuggets was that productivity grew at a better-than-expected rate in the first quarter of 2010, as productivity grew at an annual rate of 3.6%. This rate of growth was stronger than the 2.5% growth the consensus expected.

While this is good news, because it indicates that corporate profits were good, there is also some bad news. The data indicates that household incomes continue to be "squeezed," which could indicate that the burgeoning economic recovery will hit some rough water.

The Labor Department reported that jobless claims jumped 24,000 to 484,000. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expected claims to decrease by 15,000.

The four week moving average rose by 7,300 to 457,750 from 459,250 in the previous week. The number of continuing claims rose by 73,000 to 4,639,000 from a revised 4,566,000.

In our age of 'information overload,' with its veritable snow storm of economic and financial data, you have to separate the important from the less important, the substance from the static.

Further, U.S. initial jobless claims is one report that can confound investors. Yes, it is a major economic data point that the financial markets scrutinize, but it is less important than its under-publicized cousin: the 4-week moving average.

Today's strength was there all day, although a late day drop on comments regarding Greece bailouts and profit taking may have created adding selling. The weekly jobless claims data is still showing many pink slips for workers, but the data continues to improve and the continuing jobless claims was the smallest reading since the end of 2008. This was a bull market trading day, but the bears coming alive at the end of the day made the markets an uncertain win or lose until the last minute of trading today.

Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 10,841.52 +5.37 (0.05%)
S&P 500 1,165.77 -1.95 (-0.17%)
Nasdaq 2,397.41 -1.35 (-0.06%)

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While looking around NYTimes.com I stumbled across this rather scary-looking graph. That's a graph of the job losses in the past recessions, and ours is that rather nasty-looking dark blue line. Notice how steep the decline compared to other recessions at the same time.

Yes, this recession has been rather ugly, but I am not telling you any "breaking news" here. The article points out that 6.1% of the economy's nonfarm payroll jobs were lost since the beginning of the recession. Unfortunately, we can't be certain that we have reached the end of the job losses.

For the 25th time in the past 26 months, U.S. nonfarm payrolls fell during February. The Labor Department announced that 36,000 jobs were lost during February, lower than the expected figure of 50,000. The unemployment rate remained at 9.7%, which was better than expectations the rate would rise to 9.8%.

Perhaps all of the government's pre-report hand wringing over the impact of the snowstorms was unwarranted. Some economists believed that the storms could have inflated job losses by 100,000 or more. If the storms indeed caused such losses, it would mean there was a net gain of jobs last month. An increase would have been the second increase since the recession started back in December 2007.

Okay, last week I mocked the government because of the assertion that the recent blizzards were a reason that we saw a larger-than-expected increase in jobless claims. I thought that perhaps this was the blame game going overboard, but that isn't the case.

White House economic adviser Larry Summers reiterated yesterday that "winter blizzards were likely to distort U.S. February jobless figures." Seriously. Yes, I know that some companies have weather-related issues and that could have some impact on the jobless picture, but this is just a bit much.

It isn't hard to figure what's been weighing on the Dow recently. True, the soap opera-like drama being played out in Europe regarding how to point Greece toward fiscal solvency has been on traders' minds, but the big mood changer on Wall Street concerns U.S. unemployment and health of the nation's industrial sector.

Two, consecutive, unexpected increases in initial jobless claims -- they jumped 22,000 this week to 496,000 -- have given the market's bears some evidence to argue that a double-dip recession is not entirely beyond the realm of possibility.

Earlier this morning, my colleague Melly Alazraki noted that jobless claims rose in the past week. Let's take a look at the numbers. Last week, the number of people filing initial jobless claims increased 22,000 to 496,000. Not only was this increase unexpected, but it also puts the number of jobless claims at their highest rate since mid-November. "Experts" predicted the number of claims would fall to 460,000 in the past week -- whoops.

Here's the best part: some are trying to blame the increase in claims to the snowstorms that have blanketed the East Coast ... seriously. According to the Associated Press report, heavy snow boosted layoffs.

Jobless claims are big news in the financial markets and can cause the stock market to move; politicians to scurry looking for new programs and claim to be able to create or "save" a certain number of jobs.

Just this week the Labor Department reported January unemployment dropped to 9.7%.