By Jeannine Aversa
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - America's factories saw orders for big-ticket goods drop by 3.1 percent in November, the largest decline in more than a year, raising new questions about how firm a grip manufacturers have on their own fragile recovery.

The drop reported Wednesday by the Commerce Department in orders for "durable goods" - costly manufactured items expected to last at least three years - came after a 4 percent advance in October and a 2.2 percent increase in September.

The 3.1 percent decrease was the first decline since August and the largest since September 2002, when durable-goods orders fell by 6 percent.

The performance in November was weaker than economists were expecting. They were forecasting a 0.6 percent rise.

The weakness was broad-based, with cars, communications equipment, computers and machinery among categories showing a drop in orders last month.

Although economists were disappointed, they said the drop in durable-goods orders in November was likely just a short-lived, one-month rough patch rather than a signal of troubled times ahead.

"It does point out that, while manufacturers have made significant gains, manufacturing is still very fragile and conditions could change quickly. But there is nothing that happened in November that would suggest that the declines would continue," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com. "All signals point to continued improvement in business investment."

In other economic news:

• New claims for unemployment benefits dipped last week by a seasonally adjusted 1,000 to 353,000, the Labor Department said in a report that suggested the pace of layoffs is stabilizing.

• New-home sales declined by 2.4 percent in November to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.08 million, the Commerce Department said in another report. That followed a 2.5 percent decrease in October.

Even with the recent declines, however, new-home sales are on track to set a record high for 2003, economists say.