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The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment benefits remained stuck near a three-month high last week, a sign that job gains will likely remain modest.

The report disappointed economists, who had forecast a decline in unemployment applications. Even so, most analysts think employers will add about 175,000 jobs this month. That would be more than in March but less than the robust job growth achieved during the winter.

Last week, applications for unemployment aid dipped to a seasonally adjusted 388,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That was little changed from the previous week’s figure, the highest since Jan. 7.

The four-week average, a less volatile figure, rose to 381,750, also the highest in three months. When applications fall below 375,000, it generally suggests that hiring will be strong enough to lower the unemployment rate.

The figures “aren’t bad; they’re just not as good as they have been,” said Jonathan Basile, an economist at Credit Suisse.

Applications jumped sharply three weeks ago, a sign that employers had stepped up layoffs and added fewer jobs. Economists said the increase might have been inflated by temporary layoffs during the spring holidays, when many school employees are laid off.

But applications haven’t dropped back since then. And the consensus estimate that the economy will have added about 175,000 jobs in April is well below the average of 250,000 jobs added each month from December through February guaranteed fast personal loans.

The rise in applications follows a report this month that hiring slowed in March, when employers added only 120,000 jobs.

Still, many economists suggested that weather distorted the March jobs report. A warmer winter likely pulled some hiring that normally would have occurred last month into January and February.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke agreed Wednesday that weather has likely disrupted recent data.

The warm winter “made perhaps January and February artificially strong and March perhaps artificially a little bit weak,” he said at a news conference. “I wouldn’t draw too much conclusion from the March report.”

Despite the slowing improvements, the job market appears healthier than it did last year. The unemployment rate has fallen to 8.2 percent from 9.1 percent in August.

Part of the drop came from the fact that people gave up looking for work. People who are out of work but not looking for jobs aren’t counted among the unemployed.

Economists note that unemployment benefit applications remain lower than they were last year. The government’s report next week on April employment should help clarify the jobs picture.

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Oil prices hovered near $103 a barrel Tuesday in Asia amid investor worries that Europe’s debt crisis will undermine economic growth and crude consumption.

Benchmark oil for June delivery was down 13 cents to $102.98 a barrel at midday Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 77 cents to settle at $103.11 in New York on Monday.

Brent crude for June delivery was up 15 cents at $118.87 per barrel in London.

Traders are concerned fiscal austerity measures designed to lower European debt levels may trigger a recession this year. On Monday, a survey showed the eurozone’s manufacturing and services sectors unexpectedly fell in April.

“Developments in the euro area continue to drive sentiment,” said Gerald Lyons, chief economist at Standard Chartered. “The biggest threat facing the world economy is a collapse of one or more euro area economies.”

Crude has traded between $100 and $110 for most of this year as the U.S. economy improved more than expected but crude demand remained weak business card.

Some analysts are optimistic that crude demand in the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest oil consumers, is about to rebound. Economic sanctions by Western powers against Iran may also cut crude output from the OPEC member, tightening global supplies.

“We’re looking at the bottom in U.S. gasoline demand, the bottom of the China slowdown and we are just starting to feel the pinch on Iranian sanctions,” said Carl Larry at Oil Outlooks and Opinions. “Outside of another economic meltdown, there’s not much that we can see that is going to bring this oil price back down.”

In other energy trading, heating oil was down 0.4 cents at $3.14 per gallon and gasoline futures fell 0.4 cents at $3.14 per gallon. Natural gas rose 1.2 cents at $2.02 per 1,000 cubic feet.

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The Donald, camera shy?

The Star was denied entry at a Toronto press conference featuring real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump Monday to officially open the new Trump International Hotel.

Why? A spokesperson at the event said the event was

The U.S. job market took a breather in March after its best hiring stretch since the Great Recession.

Employers added 120,000 jobs last month _ half the December-February pace and well short of the 210,000 economists were expecting. The unemployment rate fell from 8.3 percent in February to 8.2 percent, the lowest since January 2009, but that was largely because many Americans stopped looking for work.

Still, few economists expect hiring to fizzle in spring and summer, as it did the past two years. And they blamed seasonal factors for much of Friday’s disappointing report from the Labor Department.

“We don’t think this is the start of another spring dip in labor market conditions,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist with Capital Economics.

The report was also closely watched in political circles. If employers retreat on hiring, consumers could lose confidence in the economy and potentially dim President Barack Obama’s re-election hopes.

Ashworth and other economists cited the weather for the latest jobs report. A warm January and February allowed companies to hire workers for outdoor jobs a few weeks earlier than usual, effectively stealing jobs from March. It partially explains a 34,000-job drop in retail hiring and a 7,000 drop in construction jobs.

“Our winter didn’t really exist,” said Alan Amdahl, who runs his own construction company in Sioux Falls, S.D. “It’s just incredible. People didn’t hibernate.”

Economists also say the numbers can bounce around from month to month. Consistently creating 200,000 jobs a month is tough. The economy hasn’t put together four straight months of 200,000 or more new jobs since early 2000.

Economists are still encouraged by the recent hiring trend: The economy has generated an average 212,000 jobs a month from January through March.

Anthony Chan, chief economist at JP Morgan Wealth Management, noted strong growth among businesses that are especially sensitive to the economy’s health. Hotels and restaurants hired 39,000 workers. Manufacturers added 37,000.

The factory hiring is especially welcome. Expanding factories create more jobs at the mines that produce raw materials, in warehouses and at trucking companies and at utilities that generate power.

Government jobs, which declined by an average 22,000 a month last year, fell just 1,000 in March. An improving economy is generating tax revenue and easing budget problems at city halls and statehouses across the country.

The March slowdown brings back painful memories of what happened in mid-2010 and 2011, when the economy lost momentum and job growth sputtered.

The job market had been on a recent roll. From December through February, the country added 734,000 jobs. The only three-month stretch that was better since the recession ended was March through May 2010, when the government was hiring tens of thousands of temporary workers for the census.

Companies across the country are hiring:

_ Nimble Storage, a young information technology company in San Jose, Calif., is rapidly adding staff to keep up with demand for its data storage devices. Anup Singh, the company’s chief financial officer, says the explosive growth of data and the need for companies to store, analyze and deliver it is driving rapid expansion. Nimble Storage has added 30 employees so far this year, bringing its workforce to 175 cash advance america. It expects to hire 70 more by the end of the year. They are hiring engineers, sales people and customer support staff.

_ Landry & Kling Cruise Event Services in Miami, which arranges events on cruise ships, has added two workers this year and plans to hire two more. Sales are strong.

“It’s like the floodgates are opening,” says CEO and co-founder Joyce Kling. “There’s an energy to our day now. We see a lot of leads floating through.”

_ IdeaPaint, a company that makes washable paint that people can use erasable markers on, has hired seven workers in the last three months. Sales have risen sharply and are expected to keep rising. So the Ashland, Mass.-based company has more plans to hire _ it has 31 employees now and expects to have 40 at the end of the year.

“We just had a board meeting yesterday and agreed to become more aggressive with our hiring, with our advertising, with our investment spending. We’re very confident,” CEO Bob Munroe said.

The unemployment rate has dropped from 9.1 percent last August to 8.2 percent last month, the lowest since Obama’s first month in the White House.

Each month, the government does one survey to learn how many jobs were created and another survey to determine the unemployment rate. Those surveys can produce results that sometimes seem to conflict.

One is called the payroll survey. It asks mostly large companies and government agencies how many people they employed during the month. This survey produces the number of jobs gained or lost.

The other is the household survey. Government workers ask whether the adults in a household have a job. Those who don’t are asked whether they’re looking for one. If they are, they’re considered unemployed. If they aren’t, they’re not considered in the work force and aren’t counted as unemployed. The household survey produces each month’s unemployment rate.

Unlike the payroll survey, the household survey captures farm workers, the self-employed and people who work for new companies. It also provides a better snapshot of hiring by small businesses.

In March, the household survey showed that the number of people who say they have a job fell by 31,000 and that a significantly larger number of people _ 79,000 _ stopped looking for a job. That is why the unemployment rate dipped.

Some economists, most notably Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, say the job market faces bigger problems than unseasonably warm weather and month-to-month volatility in the employment numbers. They say the economy isn’t growing fast enough to sustain strong job growth and to push the unemployment rate down rapidly.

The economy is expected to grow 2 percent to 2.5 percent this year. Chris Jones, of TD Economics, says that is not fast enough for sustain the monthly average of 245,000 jobs created from December through February. He expects the economy to average 200,000 new jobs a month in the April-June quarter and then to pick up speed.

“The last few months of aggressive employment growth were inconsistent with underlying economic fundamentals,” Jones said. “March’s number, while still weak, actually makes sense.”

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You’ve heard it a thousand times: Health reform will stifle small business and kill jobs.

But some business owners are telling another story — it just might make health insurance more affordable.

"This is all about leveling the playing field so small businesses get a fair shake, so we can effectively compete against larger companies," said Mike Roach, co-owner of Paloma Clothing in Portland, Ore.

Roach is a member of the National Federation of Independent Business, a powerful trade group that helped propel the case before the Supreme Court. He has also joined the American Small Business Majority, which is on a crusade against the idea that health reform is a job killer.

Health care reform isn’t a job killer - yet

He and others pin their optimism about the 2010 Affordable Care Act on the promise of new statewide insurance exchanges.

The exchanges, set to start in 2014, could allow individuals and companies access to less expensive health insurance by pooling together and spreading out risk.

Roach doesn’t worry about one of the main criticisms of the law — a rule forcing companies of 50 or more employees to provide insurance or face fines. That’s because he’s nowhere near that threshold. He is among the 5.2 million firms with fewer than 20 workers, a group that makes up 90% of small employers.

What does worry him is the cost of covering his employees.

Paloma Clothing has been offering insurance since 2008; today six of its nine workers are opting in. Roach is paying close to $17,000 annually — not a trivial expense.

Every February, just before Roach and his wife, Kim Osgood, sit down with their insurance broker, they toss the same ideas back and forth.

"Can we continue to be as generous?" she asks.

"We could lose these people," he reminds her. "The 15% they pay is already a substantial burden for them."

They’ve always renewed, even when costs jumped 20% in 2010. Roach admits it wasn’t entirely from the kindness of his heart. He is afraid of losing workers to Nordstrom, a large chain with a few stores a short drive away.

Roach also supports another aspect of health reform, a tax credit for small companies that provide workers health insurance. The $5,500 credit he received for 2010 is far above the $1,407 average.

For others, the insurance exchanges would be a place their workers could go themselves.

"If my employees have health coverage, they’ll take care of themselves, be around a lot longer and be very productive for the company," said Anthony Serianni, president of Omicron Biochemicals in South Bend, Ind. "Ailing employees leave, and you have to hire new people. It doesn’t make sense to have that kind of turnover."

What if the health reform mandate dies?

Serianni offers his employees extra salary to help them cover as much as 65% of their own insurance costs. So if they can find cheaper coverage in the exchange, his tab will fall too.

Roberta Tichenor, owner of Annie Bloom’s Books in Portland, picks up 80% of the insurance costs for her three full-time employees. That amounts to $30,000 a year.

Her 14 part-time employees are left to fend for themselves, and she hopes the exchanges would give them an affordable option, diminishing their incentive to quit for a company that offers insurance.

"I think [health reform] actually saves jobs because it’s not easy to attract quality employees to a job that pays $10 an hour," Tichenor said. 

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It’s been quite a Monday for Apple. Not only did the tech giant announce plans to give investors a $2.65 quarterly dividend and announce plans to buy back $10 billion worth of stock, but it officially landed the top spot in CNNMoney’s March Stock Mania tournament.

CNNMoney readers chose Apple (, Fortune 500) over Exxon Mobil (, Fortune 500) in the finals. Apple grabbed 65% of readers’ votes in the last round.

It’s a comeback of sorts for Apple in the March tournament. Last year, the tech company was bested by automaker Ford, earning just 43% of readers’ votes.

The final four pitted three tech companies, Apple, IBM (, Fortune 500) and Google (, Fortune 500), against Exxon.

The day Apple became normal

In total, 65,845 votes were cast during the week-long contest.

Few companies can match the precipitous run-up in Apple’s share price, which has surged 81% since December 2010. And since the beginning of 2012, Apple’s stock has gained 45%.

Compare that with Exxon’s shares, which have risen only 18% since December 2010, and gained only 2% in 2012, despite a frothy stock market.

Exxon and other oil companies have faced an uphill public relations battle in the aftermath of the devastation caused by BP’s oil spill. Add the recent jump in gas prices, and it’s not getting any easier.

March Stock Mania: See the results!

"What will you do? Put your money into a company that’s helping destroy the planet, or one that innovates? Revolution or pollution? iPad or oil spill?," commented one CNNMoney reader cash advance now.

Even with Apple’s share price hovering around $600, Wall Street analysts see more growth ahead.

Matthew Hoffman, an analyst with Cowen, said that the successful launch of the third generation of the iPad will continue to give Apple an edge in the "combined personal computer + tablet market."

Even with the loss of Apple’s visionary founder Steve Jobs from a battle with cancer last year, most analysts think Apple will continue putting forth game changing products.

Apple was a clear leader throughout March Stock Mania.

It won 93% of the votes in the first round against newly public Zynga (), 88% against McDonald’s (, Fortune 500) in round two, and 85% of the votes against Wal-Mart (, Fortune 500) in round three. In the Final Four, 67% of voter chose Apple over IBM.

Last year’s champion Ford did better in March Stock Mania than last year’s NCAA winner University of Connecticut. UConn made it to the NCAA but lost in the first round.

Ford showed up and competed well this year, but failed to make the final four losing out to IBM.

It looks pretty clear that CNNMoney’s readers are betting on a continued tech boom.  

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Sweden was the first European country to introduce bank notes in 1661. Now it’s come farther than most on the path toward getting rid of them.

“I can’t see why we should be printing bank notes at all anymore,” says Bjoern Ulvaeus, former member of 1970’s pop group ABBA, and a vocal proponent for a world without cash.

The contours of such a society are starting to take shape in this high-tech nation, frustrating those who prefer coins and bills over digital money.

In most Swedish cities, public buses don’t accept cash; tickets are prepaid or purchased with a cell phone text message. A small but growing number of businesses only take cards, and some bank offices _ which make money on electronic transactions _ have stopped handling cash altogether.

“There are towns where it isn’t at all possible anymore to enter a bank and use cash,” complains Curt Persson, chairman of Sweden’s National Pensioners’ Organization.

He says that’s a problem for elderly people in rural areas who don’t have credit cards or don’t know how to use them to withdraw cash.

The decline of cash is noticeable even in houses of worship, like the Carl Gustaf Church in Karlshamn, southern Sweden, where Vicar Johan Tyrberg recently installed a card reader to make it easier for worshippers to make offerings.

“People came up to me several times and said they didn’t have cash but would still like to donate money,” Tyrberg says.

Bills and coins represent only 3 percent of Sweden’s economy, compared to an average of 9 percent in the eurozone and 7 percent in the U.S., according to the Bank for International Settlements, an umbrella organization for the world’s central banks.

Three percent is still too much if you ask Ulvaeus. A cashless society may seem like an odd cause for someone who made a fortune on “Money, Money, Money” and other ABBA hits, but for Ulvaeus it’s a matter of security.

After his son was robbed for the third time he started advocating a faster transition to a fully digital economy, if only to make life harder for thieves.

“If there were no cash, what would they do?” says Ulvaeus, 66.

The Swedish Bankers’ Association says the shrinkage of the cash economy is already making an impact in crime statistics.

The number of bank robberies in Sweden plunged from 110 in 2008 to 16 in 2011 _ the lowest level since it started keeping records 30 years ago. It says robberies of security transports are also down.

“Less cash in circulation makes things safer, both for the staff that handle cash, but also of course for the public,” says Par Karlsson, a security expert at the organization.

The prevalence of electronic transactions _ and the digital trail they generate _ also helps explain why Sweden has less of a problem with graft than countries with a stronger cash culture, such as Italy or Greece, says economics professor Friedrich Schneider of the Johannes Kepler University in Austria.

“If people use more cards, they are less involved in shadow economy activities,” says Schneider, an expert on underground economies.

In Italy _ where cash has been a common means of avoiding value-added tax and hiding profits from the taxman _ Prime Minister Mario Monti in December put forward measures to limit cash transactions to payments under (EURO)1,000 ($1,300), down from (EURO)2,500 before.

The flip side is the risk of cybercrimes. According to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention the number of computerized fraud cases, including skimming, surged to nearly 20,000 in 2011 from 3,304 in 2000.

Oscar Swartz, the founder of Sweden’s first Internet provider, Banhof, says a digital economy also raises privacy issues because of the electronic trail of transactions. He supports the idea of phasing out cash, but says other anonymous payment methods need to be introduced instead.

“One should be able to send money and donate money to different organizations without being traced every time,” he says.

It’s no surprise that Sweden and other Nordic countries are at the forefront of this development, given their emphasis on technology and innovation.

For the second year in a row, Sweden ranked first in the Global Information Technology Report released at the World Economic Forum in January. The Economist Intelligence Unit also put Sweden top of its latest digital economy rankings, in 2010. Both rankings measure how far countries have come in integrating information and communication technologies in their economies.

Internet startups in Sweden and elsewhere are now hard at work developing payment and banking services for smartphones.

Swedish company iZettel has developed a device for small traders, similar to Square in the U.S., that plugs into the back of an iPhone to make it work like a credit card terminal. Sweden’s biggest banks are expected to launch a joint service later this year that allows customers to transfer money between each other’s accounts in real-time with their cell phones.

Most experts don’t expect cash to disappear anytime soon, but that its proportion of the economy will continue to decline as such payment options become available. Before retiring as deputy governor of Sweden’s central bank, Lars Nyberg said last year that cash will survive “like the crocodile, even though it may be forced to see its habitat gradually cut back.”

Andrea Wramfelt, whose bowling alley in the southern city of Landskrona stopped accepting cash in 2010, makes a bolder prediction: She believes coins and notes will cease to exist in Sweden within 20 years.

“Personally I think this is what people should expect in the future,” she says.

But there are pockets of resistance. Hanna Celik, whose family owns a newspaper kiosk in a Stockholm shopping mall, says the digital economy is all about banks seeking bigger earnings.

Celik says he gets charged about 5 Swedish kronor ($0.80) for every credit card transaction, and a law passed by the Swedish Parliament prevents him from passing on that charge to consumers.

“That stinks,” he says. “For them (the banks), this is a very good way to earn a lot of money, that’s what it’s all about. They make huge profits.”

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General Motors is likely to spend more than $500 million on employee bonuses and profit-sharing based on the company’s performance last year.

GM, which made a record profit in 2011, will pay bonuses of at least $182 million to white-collar workers such as engineers, car designers and managers on Wednesday, according to a formula obtained by The Associated Press. That’s on top of $332.5 million in profit-sharing it already agreed to pay factory workers.

In the past, such payments have drawn criticism from those who believe the government shouldn’t have bailed out GM and Chrysler. But GM, which made a record $7.6 billion last year, says the payments are needed to hold on to skilled employees. It’s also keeping fixed costs down by giving bonuses instead of annual pay raises.

The bonuses will go to most of the company’s 26,000 salaried employees, many of whom make more than $100,000 a year. The bonuses will range from 8 percent of base pay to 14 percent, according to the formula.

The company would not release the percentages, nor would it say how much it will spend on the bonuses. But it’s likely the average bonus for salaried employees will be more than the $7,000 that each of GM’s 47,500 factory workers will get in March.

The white-collar bonuses are determined by a worker’s pay grade, individual performance and company metrics that measure whether GM met goals including pretax earnings, market share, cash flow and quality. This year’s salaried bonuses will be smaller than last year’s, when the company met all of its goals. A small number of top performers will get pay raises or larger bonuses, the company has said.

“It’s a pay-for-performance type approach that really drives accountability in the organization and helps employees connect their compensation with performance,” says GM spokeswoman Lynda Messina.

GM must reward employees because the labor market is starting to become competitive again, especially for computer experts, engineers and other skilled jobs, says James Stoeckmann, senior compensation specialist for World at Work, an organization of human resources executives who specialize in pay issues.

“Companies are having a hard time finding all those critical skills they need,” he says. At almost every company, white-collar bonuses are higher than those given to blue-collar workers, he says.

The U.S. spent nearly $50 billion to save GM three years ago, and some Republicans think the government should get its money back before bonuses are paid. The company nearly ran out of cash when auto sales dried up in the middle of the financial crisis. With little or no private loans available, GM needed a bailout to make it through bankruptcy protection.

The government agreed to take stock in GM in exchange for most of the debt. So far it has recouped more than $22 billion. Taxpayers still own 500 million shares of GM, or 26.5 percent of the company. If the government sold those shares at the current price of around $26, it would get about $13.2 billion. But it’s waiting for the stock price to rise before selling. Shares would have to sell for more than $53 each for the government to get all its money back, which is unlikely.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a critic of the bailout, said the Obama administration needs to figure out a way to get the money back.

“As the company gives out bonuses, the Treasury Department needs to have an exit strategy for getting GM to repay the taxpayers for helping the company survive,” he said in a statement. “Without an exit strategy, GM can expect more questions and scrutiny regarding employee bonuses.”

The formula to calculate the bonus percentages was given to the Associated Press by a person familiar with GM’s compensation. The person didn’t want to be identified because the company did not make the formula public.

The company announced earlier this month that it plans to freeze its U.S. pension plan for white-collar workers and move to a 401 (k)-type plan. GM also gave salaried employees five more vacation days.

White-collar workers fared better at crosstown rival Ford Motor Co. Ford said last month that 20,000 salaried workers will get 2.7 percent pay raises on April 1, plus bonuses based on individual performance.

In addition, Ford will make profit-sharing payments of around $6,200 each to its 41,600 U.S. factory employees in March.

GM CEO Daniel Akerson has been against giving annual raises, saying the added costs limit the company’s flexibility in an economic downturn.

But that could hurt GM over time, if Ford workers get pay raises and their salaries grow far larger than those at GM, says David Whiston, auto equity analyst for Morningstar.

Ford, which borrowed billions from banks but avoided a government bailout, said the raises are needed to stay competitive with other big companies. The automaker made a $20 billion profit last year

Salaried workers at Chrysler Group LLC, which made far less money than GM or Ford, also will get profit-sharing checks. The company, which is not publicly traded, would not disclose the amounts. About 26,000 union workers at Chrysler, which also took a government bailout, will get checks of about $1,500. Chrysler made $183 million last year.

GM, Chrysler and Ford agreed to the profit-sharing for factory workers in contract talks last year with the United Auto Workers union. Most of the workers won’t get pay raises.

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China is likely to see little slowdown in growth this year even as its government needs to overhaul its economy to manage expansion over the next two decades, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said.

The economy will probably have a