NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - New claims for jobless benefits dipped last week, the government said Thursday, staying under the key level of 400,000 for the third straight week and possibly signaling improvement in the nation's struggling job market.

The number of initial claims for unemployment benefits fell to 390,000 in the week ended Aug. 2 from a revised 393,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said. Economists, on average, expected 395,000 new claims, according to a Reuters poll.

Many economists view 400,000 as the sign of a soft job market. Claims were above 400,000 from mid-February to mid-July, 22 straight weeks. Last week's level of claims was the lowest since 378,000 in the week ended Feb. 8.

The four-week moving average of new claims, which irons out the volatility of the weekly data, fell to 397,250 from a revised 410,000 the prior week.

Continued claims, the number of people out of work for a week or more, rose to 3.69 million for the week ended July 26, the latest data available, from a revised 3.62 million the prior week.

U.S. stock market futures were little changed by the data, continuing to trade lower, pointing to a negative opening on Wall Street. Treasury bond prices rose.

The Labor Department also reported that non-farm productivity, a measure of output per worker hour, rose at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.7 percent in the second quarter, versus a 2.1 percent rate in the first quarter.

The department also revised its measure of 2002's productivity growth upward to 5.4 percent, the strongest growth since 6.7 percent in 1950.

With companies able to squeeze more work out of fewer workers, the labor market has been slower than usual to catch up with the rest of the economy. Though the latest recession ended in November 2001, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, job cuts have continued, and the unemployment rate has risen to 6.2 percent.

Though economic activity has improved lately, raising hopes that the labor market is close to a turn-around, economists believe it could still take at least a few months before many more jobs become available.