NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - New jobless claims in the United States dipped last week, the government said Thursday, but not as much as analysts expected, staying well above a benchmark reading that points to a weak labor market.

The Labor Department said the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell to 448,000 in the week ended April 26 from a revised 461,000 the prior week. Economists, on average, expected 432,000 new claims, according to a Reuters poll.

The report comes a day before the Labor Department is scheduled to report on April unemployment and payroll growth. Economists, on average, expect the jobless rate to rise to 5.9 percent and think payrolls shrank by 53,000 jobs, according to Reuters. Thursday's jobless claims report could be a sign these expectations are overly optimistic.

U.S. stock market futures traded lower after the report, pointing to a negative opening on Wall Street. Treasury bond prices rose.

Private non-farm payrolls are 2.6 million jobs lower than they were in March 2001, when economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research say a recession began. After a brief recovery in mid-2002, the labor market has worsened in recent months.

Most economists have said for months that the economy's biggest problem was the U.S.-led war with Iraq. According to this view, businesses would make long-term spending and hiring plans when the war was over.

However, even after the war has essentially been over for weeks, jobless claims have been consistently high, drawing the attention of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who warned on Wednesday they were a sign of business caution that could slow down an economic recovery.

Some economists worry businesses will not start hiring again until they see demand pick up significantly. Since there's little pent-up demand on the part of consumers, whose spending makes up more than two-thirds of the economy, it seems possible that the full economic recovery could take several months. Most economists think it will take months before the labor market, at least, begins growing significantly.

In the Labor Department's report Thursday, the four-week moving average of weekly jobless claims, which irons out the ups and downs of the volatile weekly data, rose to 442,000 -- the highest level since 449,000 in the week ended April 20, 2002 -- from a revised 440,750 the prior week.

Continued claims, the number of people out of work for a week or more, rose to 3.68 million in the week ended April 19, the latest data available, from a revised 3.57 million the prior week.