Treasurys remained higher Thursday, pushing yields down, after a report showed continuing stress in the employment market amid rising concern that lawmakers' plan to stimulate the economy will not be effective. U.S. government debt hung onto gains after a second report said retail sales in January made a surprise rise. Two-year note yields , which move opposite to prices, fell 4 basis points to 0.88%. A basis point is 0.01%. Ten-year note yields declined for a third day, by 3 basis points to 2.76%. Treasurys had been up before the economic reports on concerns over the potential success of the $789 billion economic stimulus plan, agreed upon by Senate and House of Representative negotiators late Wednesday, to boost economic growth, analysts said. The package reportedly spends less than a House-passed bill proposed and puts more people back to work than the Senate-approved bill would have. See full story on stimulus deal. "U.S. Treasurys are lower in yield on concerns that the U.S. stimulus package will not be sufficient enough," said Thomas di Galoma, head of U.S. government bond trading at Jefferies & Co. Investors often seek the relative reliability of U.S. government debt as an alternative to riskier assets, including stocks, when the economy declines. The Labor Department said jobless claims declined by 8,000 to 623,000 in the week ended Feb. 7. Continuing claims, an indication of the difficulty of finding a new job, reached a record 4.81 million. See jobless claims story. A separate government report said retail sales in January unexpectedly rose 1%. Excluding automobiles, sales unexpectedly rose 0.9%. See retail sales story. Auction weighing Still to come, the Treasury Department will sell $14 billion in 30-year bonds, finishing off the massive amount of debt sold this week in the government's quarterly refunding. Bids are due at 1 p.m. Eastern time. Yields on the most-recently sold long bond rose 2 basis points to 3.47%. Yields often rise before an auction as traders try to increase the yield to get the best deal in the auction, and the best chance of a rally once they've bought the debt. The Treasurys received strong demand at auctions earlier this week for record amounts of three- and 10-year notes. Still, there are lingering worries as the number of primary government security dealers, firms required to bid at auctions, has dwindled even further. The Federal Reserve announced late Wednesday that Merrill Lynch is officially no longer a dealer after being acquired by Bank of America . "Our concern is largely one of the setup and how the handful of dealers takes down the largest [amount of long-term debt] in a given week in history," said strategists at RBS Greenwich Capital, one of the 16 dealers remaining.

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