The number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits soared to a record, as companies slash jobs to lower costs in a deepening recession. Continuing claims for benefits rose to 4.776 million in the week ended Jan. 17, the highest since record-keeping started in 1967, the Labor Department said today in Washington. First-time filings increased 3,000 to 588,000 in the week ended Jan. 24. Thousands of job cuts announced earlier this week at Caterpillar Inc., Target Corp. and other companies suggest unemployment may climb further. Federal Reserve policy makers yesterday voted to keep the central bank's target interest rate at zero to 0.25 percent and noted employment is among the measures that have declined ``steeply.'' ``The labor market is quickly eroding,'' Ryan Sweet, an economist at Moody's Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania, said before the report. ``The employment rate is going to continue to decline as businesses aggressively cut workers and ratchet back spending.'' Initial claims were estimated to fall to 575,000 from the 589,000 initially reported for the prior week, according to the median projection of 39 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. Estimates ranged from 540,000 to 650,000. The four-week moving average, a less volatile measure, increased to 542,500 from 518,250 the previous week, the report showed. The unemployment rate among people eligible for benefits, which tends to track the jobless rate, rose to 3.6 percent, the highest since 1983, from 3.4 percent in the week ended Jan. 17. These data and continuing claims are reported with a one-week lag compared with initial filings. Payroll Report Five states and territories had an increase in new claims for the week ended Jan. 17, while 48 reported a decrease. The week ended Jan. 17 coincided with the period that the government performed its survey for the monthly payrolls report. Labor will release the report on Feb. 6. Wachovia Corp. Chief Economist John Silvia projects the jobless rate will climb to 9.5 percent by the end of next year, the highest level since 1983. The U.S. lost 2.6 million jobs last year, more than in any year since 1945. The unemployment rate climbed to 7.2 percent in December, the highest level in almost 16 years. President Barack Obama said yesterday he's confident that the U.S. economy can be reinvigorated, starting with the passage of a stimulus package. He spoke after meeting with the chief executive officers of some of the U.S.'s largest companies, including International Business Machines Corp. CEO Samuel Palmisano and Honeywell Inc. Chairman David M. Cote. `Sober' Talks ``It was a sober meeting, because these companies, and the workers they employ, are going through times more trying than any that we've seen in a long, long while,'' Obama said at the White House. Still, he said, ``we left our meeting confident that we can still turn our economy around.'' Obama is trying to negotiate with Congress a stimulus package worth more than $800 billion to spur the economy. The Fed's Open Market Committee said yesterday it ``continues to anticipate that economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for some time.'' The faltering labor market has pushed down consumer confidence and led to the worst holiday sales season in at least 40 years. Companies earlier this week announced more than 74,000 in planned job cuts because of the global economic recession. Boeing, Target Boeing Co. said yesterday it plans to eliminate 10,000 jobs, or about 6 percent of its workforce. The reductions include 4,500 that were previously announced in the commercial- plane half of Boeing's business. Caterpillar and Target were also among the companies announcing job cuts this week. Caterpillar, the world's largest maker of bulldozers and excavators, said it's cutting 20,000 jobs and Target, the second-biggest U.S. discount retailer, announced plans to eliminate 9 percent of the positions at its headquarters and close a distribution center. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect the Commerce Department to report tomorrow that the U.S. economy contracted at a 5.5 percent annual pace in the fourth quarter, the biggest drop since 1982. ``We are expecting recessionary conditions to persist in most of the world throughout the year, with no growth in the world economy,'' Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens said.

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