Plus: Leading Economic Indicators Rise, Durable Goods Orders Decline and Jobless Claims Drop.

Leading Economic Indicators Rise in March
The slow economic recovery in the U.S. is likely to continue for the next few months, according to The Conference Board last week. The research organization’s index of leading economic indicators (LEI) rose 1.4 percent in March, “the fastest pace of growth in 10 months,” the Associated Press says.

According to Agence France-Presse, most analysts had expected a 1.1 percent rise in March.

Following a 0.4 percent and 0.6 percent gain in February and January, respectively, last month’s rise marked the 12th consecutive gain.

“The indicators point to a slow recovery that should continue over the next few months. The leading, coincident and lagging series are rising,” Conference Board economist Ken Goldstein said in a statement. “Strength of demand remains the big question going forward. Improvement in employment and income will be the key factors in whether consumers push the recovery on a stronger path.”

Durable Goods Orders Decline in March
Despite positive sales for most goods categories, orders for manufactured durable goods fell 1.3 percent in March due to plummeting transportation equipment orders, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported on Friday.

New orders for durable goods last month decreased by $2.2 billion, the first monthly decline in three consecutive months of growth, to reach a total of $176.7 billion. However, excluding the transportation sector — which has dropped in orders for the past two months — durable goods orders actually rose 2.8 percent in March, with significant gains in numerous product groups.

“[O]utside the aircraft industry, the gains were broad-based. Orders for computers and electronic products rose by 3.4 percent, the most since February 2009, while demand for machinery jumped by 8.6 percent, the most since September of last year,” the Associated Press reports.

According to the Commerce Department, durable goods shipments increased last month by 1.2 percent, following two months of declines. Machinery shipments had the largest increase, rising 4.3 percent to $24 billion. Inventories continued a three-month upswing, rising 0.2 percent to $304.7 billion in March.

“Clearly, an inventory swing is well underway as producers built stocks for the third consecutive month. The only cautionary note is that order backlogs in most major categories have weakened this year, a sign that factories are producing to demand rather than supplying the market from inventories,” Thomas Duesterberg, president and CEO of the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, said in an analysis of the durable goods report.

“The test over the next year will be to increase final demand so that the current jump from the inventory swing can be sustained,” Duesterberg continued. “Domestic consumer demand and exports will have to strengthen from current levels to ensure a sustainable recovery into 2011.”

Recovery in Sight for Global Logistics Market
Following a severe slump in 2009, the global logistics and express market is expected to reach $4 trillion by 2013, up from its current value of $3.5 trillion, according to Datamonitor this month.

Based on data gleaned from its new Global Logistics and Express Analyser, the analyst firm has determined that logistics and express spending as a proportion of global GDP will regain its 2008 peak of 9.3 percent by 2013.

“The global logistics and express market saw $300 billion of its value wiped out in 2009 alone, and even if the industry has started to enjoy a recovery in volumes, changing customer preferences, modal shifts, technological advancements, environmental concerns and other trends have fundamentally changed the landscape in which service providers have to re-establish themselves,” Erik Van Baaren, senior logistics and express analyst at Datamonitor, said in a statement.

“Demand will continue to shift away from North America and Europe to the emerging markets of Latin America, BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India and China] and the Middle East,” according to Datamonitor, which cites sustainability and cost-effectiveness as the two main drivers of the industry’s development through 2013, which “will result in a modal shift, with air freight losing ground to rail, road and sea.”

Jobless Claims Fall
First-time jobless claims in the week ending April 17 fell by 24,000 to 456,000, and the four-week moving average for initial claims rose by 2,750 from the previous week to reach 460,250, according to the U.S. Department of Labor last week. Without seasonal adjustments, initial claims dropped by 79,187 from the prior week, reaching 431,740, a significant improvement in the initial jobless claims rate compared with the 596,564 claims over the same period in 2009.

“The drop comes after claims rose sharply in the previous two weeks,” the AP reports. “A Labor Department analyst attributed those increases to seasonal adjustment difficulties around the Easter holiday, which falls on different weeks each year.”

Concerns remain over the prospects of stabilizing the employment market. More sustained declines in the jobless-claims rate would indicate that the previous two weeks of increases were related to seasonal volatility, but experts say the weekly claims number has to fall below 400,000 before a true job recovery can be declared.

“Because of population growth, the economy needs to create about 110,000 jobs each month just to stay even, and it would have to create much more than that to chip way at the 15 million people who are unemployed,” MarketWatch explains. “Most analysts in and out of government predict only a slow decline in the unemployment rate this year and next.”