There was some good news on the state of the United States economy released today, ahead of tomorrow’s April employment report. The productivity of companies in the U.S. rose solidly in the first quarter of 2004, and new filings for jobless benefits plunged last week to their lowest level in more than three years.

The U.S. Labor Department reported today that productivity, which is the amount an employee produces for every hour on the job, rose at a 3.5% annual rate in the January-to-March quarter, up from a 2.5% pace registered in the previous quarter.

The latest reading on productivity marked the best showing since the third quarter of 2003 and matched analysts’ forecasts.

In the first quarter of the year, companies boosted output at a 4.9% rate, up from a 4.2% pace in the previous quarter. Workers’ hours, meanwhile, rose at a 1.3% rate in the first quarter, following a 1.6% growth rate in the fourth quarter.

Companies’ unit labour costs increased at a rate of 0.5% in the first quarter, after being flat in the final quarter of last year. It marked the biggest increase in a year.

In a separate release, the Labor Department said new applications filed for unemployment insurance dropped by a seasonally adjusted 25,000 to 315,000, for the week ending May 1. That marked the lowest level since Oct. 28, 2000.

The layoffs picture presented by the jobless claims filings looked better than economists had expected. They had forecast claims to dip to around 335,000 last week.