First-time jobless claims rocketed higher last week.

European shares fall heavily, paced by banks and insurance companies, as investors continue to fret about the potential for further write-offs in the sector.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The costs of employing a worker in the United States rose at a steady pace in the fourth quarter from the prior three months, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

U.S. stock futures point to another day of declines, hit by poor jobs data.

Andrew Gunter, mutual fund analyst for Morningstar Inc., says that investors should be wary of funds “that are expensive for no reason.”

A weaker start looms as earnings and bond insurers hold the spotlight, overshadowing the Fed’s latest rate cut. First-time jobless claims rocket higher by 69,000 in the latest week and real consumer spending flattens in December, further evidence the economy was getting weaker as the fourth quarter closed.

Financials such as Standard Chartered and Friends Provident dragged down the broader London market as more bad news added to worries about the health of the sector.

(Recasts and adds detail.) PARIS (MarketWatch) — French insurance company Axa SA said Thursday that strong sales growth in the U.S. and Australia, plus the contribution from its mid-2006 Winterthur acquisition helped lift revenue 20% in 2007. On a comparable basis – which figures in Winterthur’s results from all of 2006 and 2007 and is on a constant foreign-exchange basis – revenue would have been up 5.4% in 2007. Revenue over the period rose to EUR93.63 billion from EUR77.97 billion a year before.

Standard Chartered’s become the latest in a string of banks to rescue struggling structured investment vehicles, saying Thursday that it will take on its balance sheet $7.15 billion of assets from the Whistlejacket Capital fund.

The dollar traded mixed in European action Thursday, losing ground against the euro and the British pound but gaining against the Japanese yen in the aftermath of the Federal Reserve’s latest reduction in U.S. interest rates.