NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock futures are moving higher as the market gets a pleasant surprise on the labor market: unemployed workers are starting to return to work.
Government data shows that the number of unemployed workers continuing to receive benefits unexpectedly dropped for the first time in 20 weeks. New jobless claims also declined, falling 4,000 to 621,000.
The encouraging news on the jobs market is helping to offset disappointing sales reports from retailers.
After paring early gains on the sales data, U.S. futures are mostly climbing higher. Ahead of the market’s open, Dow Jones industrial average futures are up 30 to 8,699. Standard & Poor’s 500 index futures are up 3 to 935. But the Nasdaq 100 index futures are down 0.8 to 1,476.
