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NEW YORK - Higher unemployment claims and weak readings from two economic indexes reinforced recession worries Thursday.
The Labor Department said Thursday that applications for unemployment benefits rose to 372,000, an increase of 17,000 from the previous week.
Separately, the New York-based Conference Board's gauge of future economic activity rose 0.1 percent for March, reversing five months of decline. But the private business group's indicator has shown a 3.3 percent annual rate of decline since March 2007.
That's ''the kind of result, that whenever we've seen it in the past, the U.S. economy has been heading into a recession,'' Michael Gregory, senior economist for BMO Nesbitt Burns, a Toronto investment bank. ''The recession signal here is clear and unequivocal.''
The Conference Board index is designed to forecast economic activity in the next three to six months based on 10 economic components, including stock prices, building permits and initial claims for unemployment benefits.
The board said another of its indexes, which measures current economic activity, has also deteriorated in recent months, with weakness becoming more widespread among the components of both.
The readings suggest ''economic weakness is likely to continue in the near term,'' Ken Goldstein, labor economist at the Conference Board, said in a statement accompanying the report.
The jobless numbers told the same story. The four-week average for jobless claims was 376,000, down only slightly from 376,750, the previous week.
Claims have been unusually volatile in recent weeks.