NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - New jobless claims rose in the United States last week, the government said Thursday, coming in slightly higher than Wall Street forecasts.

The Labor Department said 353,000 people filed new claims for state unemployment benefits in the week ended Jan. 3, compared with an unrevised 339,000 the prior week. Economists, on average, expected 345,000 new claims, according to Briefing.com.

The four-week moving average of new claims, which irons out the volatility of the weekly data, fell to 350,250 from an unrevised 355,750 the prior week. It was the lowest level for the four-week moving average since the week of Feb. 3, 2001.

Continued claims, the number of people out of work for a week or more, fell to 3.27 million for the week ended Dec. 27, the latest data available, from a revised 3.285 million the prior week.

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On Wall Street, stocks rose modestly after the report, while Treasury bond prices were mixed.

The department is set to release the December jobs report on Friday. Economists, on average, expect that unemployment held steady at 5.9 percent while payrolls outside the farm sector grew by 148,000 jobs.

Though the unemployment rate has fallen from its mid-summer peak of 6.4 percent, payrolls outside the farm sector are still 2.4 million jobs smaller than they were in February 2001, marking the longest such stretch of payroll pain since World War II.

Tax-rebate checks, along with the proceeds of a wave of late-summer cash-out mortgage refinancing, helped push economic growth up to an 8.2 percent rate in the third quarter, the best in nearly 20 years.

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Analysts hope the third quarter's growth will kick the economy into higher gear in upcoming quarters.

That would create more jobs, as well as accelerating wage and salary growth, which would tend to bolster economic growth in the long run.

Recent jobless claims reports have helped support this view, but consumers are not yet convinced -- December sentiment surveys have shown lingering anxiety about the job market.