Stocks rise as job market shows gains

NEW YORK - Stocks mostly rose Thursday, helped by a report that showed the number of people who filed for unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level in three months. The gains were enough to give the Standard & Poor's 500 index its third all-time high this week.

The report on unemployment claims was one of the first bits of good news investors have gotten on the economy, following weeks of data that painted a picture of a U.S. economic recovery that was slowing down due to the severe winter weather that has hit much of the country.

The S&P 500 index rose 3.22 points, or 0.17 percent, to 1,877.03.

Staples fell the most of any stock in the S&P 500 after the office supplies store company said it would close 10 percent of its stores because nearly half of its sales are now generated online. The stock fell $2.05, or 15 percent, to $11.35.

Staples is the second major brick-and-mortar retailer to announce large-scale store closures this week. Two days ago, RadioShack said it would close as many as 1,100 locations as part of a restructuring effort.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 61.71 points, or 0.38 percent, to 16,421.89. The Nasdaq composite fell 5.85 points, or 0.13 percent, to 4,352.13.

The number of people who filed for unemployment benefits fell by 26,000 last week to 323,000, according to the Labor Department. That was far less than the 337,000 claims that economists had expected, according to FactSet, and a sign that fewer people are being laid off.

Typically, investors would not put much weight in the weekly unemployment report, because the numbers can be volatile. But with the rest of the data investors typically have at their disposal tainted by the weather, including Friday's closely watched monthly government jobs report, investors don't have much to work with at the moment.

Expectations for the February job numbers are low. Economists expect that employers added 145,000 jobs last month and that the unemployment rate held steady at 6.6 percent. Before the bad winter weather hit much of the country starting in December, the U.S. economy was creating around 225,000 jobs a month.

Outside the U.S., investors remained concerned about Ukraine, where tensions have been escalating over Russia's deployment of troops to Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula.

In other markets, bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note rose to 2.73 percent from 2.71 percent Wednesday. Gold rose $11.50 to $1,351.80 an ounce. Gold has risen 2 percent this week as the tensions in Ukraine escalated.